


crossed out

by aminiyard, flybbfly



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Past Rape/Non-con, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-03 00:35:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15807735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aminiyard/pseuds/aminiyard, https://archiveofourown.org/users/flybbfly/pseuds/flybbfly
Summary: When Neil gets kidnapped in Binghamton, the Butcher sends him to an assassin training program in Russia. He comes back two years later a blank slate programmed to bring Kevin back to the Moriyamas. The Foxes don't plan to let that happen.





	crossed out

**Author's Note:**

> think of this as an experiment in character, not plot. 
> 
> title is a reference to daughter's song “[new ways](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6v0QY75VdQ).” 
> 
> this fic is not as sexy as the E rating would make it seem. i just figured better safe than sorry u know
> 
> some trigger warnings: brief moments of suicidal ideation; mentions of past self-harm; references to and memories of past abuse, including canon sexual assault and torture; toxic relationship dynamics; canon-typical violence. feel free to reach out here or on [tumblr](http://wilsherejack.tumblr.com) if you need any elaboration or tips on what to avoid.

One year, ten months, and twelve days after Neil disappears, Andrew stands on a ledge and tries to talk himself into stepping right off it. 

This isn't the first time he's been here. It's not the first time he's wanted to fall and keep falling and falling and falling and—

He still plays exy. Or, well, he's still on the exy team. He spends most practices lying on the bleachers, staring at the ceiling, knee deep in a bottle of alcohol he got off Wymack. This is Kevin's last year, which means Andrew doesn't have to keep up the charade anymore a few months from now. Aaron and Nicky can stay on the team without his help. Nicky won't care, and Aaron will be happier without Andrew as his constant shadow. He can finally come out of the cheerleader closet or whatever.

But Andrew can't do it now. He needs to step back off the ledge. He still has a deal with Kevin. He still has a promise to Aaron. Failing at one doesn't mean he needs to break off all of them.

There's a car coming. Its headlights are the only bright spot on campus this late at night, this early in the semester. 

It isn't anything. It can't be anything. Andrew spent a year combing through every news result about missing persons, the Butcher, Nathaniel Wesninski, and the Moriyamas. Nothing came up. Business deals in Russia that led to nowhere, money laundered through the Moriyamas' exy team and the Butcher's shell companies, and no mysterious deaths or illnesses anywhere. 

Nathaniel Wesninski, alias Neil Josten: not missing per his father in Baltimore. But also—Andrew knows, because he spent half a muggy summer in Baltimore—not in Baltimore. 

Not in West Virginia. Not hidden at Edgar Allan (and wasn't that a fun trip—forcing Kevin to help him work his way around the entire Nest one night when Jean promised Riko would be away recruiting. It was a trade, not out of the goodness of Jean's heart: Renee broke him out a month a later). 

Not in England, either: Kevin paid for that trip with his old exy star money, brought them face to face with a crime family called the Hatfords. Not a word on Neil, Stuart promised, which was at least helpful because it meant they didn't have to learn Urdu and try to make their way around Pakistan. 

And yet: not dead, as far as Andrew could tell. It's the real reason he's still here. That thing they always say to children: if you're lost, don't move. You'll be found easier that way. 

The car is driving too quickly. Andrew's eyes focus on it as its path takes it from the far end of campus up toward the athletic complex. It's too nice to belong to a student—since Andrew wrecked his car (he'll still say it was an accident to anyone who asks. Not rage. Certainly not sentiment), the only person with a car that nice here is Allison.

He waits. He watches.

The car pulls up in front of Fox Tower. The haphazard park—fast, untrained, like the driver only learned how to drive to make quick getaways—sparks something inside Andrew's chest. 

A slight figure gets out. 

No. 

It can't be. It can't be. It's been nearly two years. No calls, no letters, not so much as an email. Andrew has his phone. Andrew has his keys. Andrew has his binder, his contacts, his stupid magazine cutouts of fucking Kevin and fucking Riko. It can't be.

Andrew takes the stairs three at a time because he doesn't think he can wait for the elevator. He gets to the second floor landing and almost runs right into him.

Neil always looked good in black. It sets off the coloring of his hair and eyes, makes him look older, a little more dangerous. And danger always looked good on Neil. 

He is stockier now—his sweater is tight, and his shoulders are prominent. His jaw looks cut out of marble. His eyes are blank. The tattoo Riko gave him is gone, lost in muddled scarring on his cheek, like someone held his face to a flame.

“Excuse me,” Neil says. 

He pushes past Andrew and continues up the stairs.

No. It's been nearly two years. Andrew is not waiting any longer for an explanation. He catches the back of Neil's sweater, waits for him to turn around.

“Can I help you?” Neil asks, tone a little cool. 

On the day they met before Neil graduated from high school, Neil was instantly vicious. He was the same when he first moved in at PSU: smarter than he looked, desperate, clearly comfortable with violence. That entire year, every time he talked to Andrew, he was—first fearful and angry, then wary, then too familiar. 

Never cool. 

This is not Neil. This is Nathaniel. Strange to meet him now, after all this time. He is famous, at least in Fox Tower.

Something inside Andrew breaks. He wasn't aware he was capable of breaking any further.

“Let go of me,” Nathaniel says.

Andrew does, but he follows him up the stairs anyway. Nathaniel is still fucking fast, but he doesn't seem to be in much of a rush. He casts a curious glance toward Andrew when Andrew gets off on the same floor as him—the floor Andrew's room is on—but doesn't say anything more until they get to Andrew's room.

“Do you mind?” Nathaniel says. “This is private.”

Andrew just stares back. If Nathaniel thinks he's going to break into his room and intimidate Kevin or whatever, he's going to have to get through Andrew first. Maybe it's poetic. He can kill Nathaniel like he always promised to.

Nathaniel shrugs. “Your funeral.” 

He doesn't have a key, but he does have a lockpicking kit. He's wearing gloves like he's trying not to get caught, but that doesn't make any sense. Of course Andrew recognizes him already. Kevin will, too, and Aaron and Nicky and anyone else they wake up.

No one is in front of the TV when they get there, which makes sense since it's two in the morning and they have practice in a few hours. Andrew doesn't care—he can sleep through practice if he wants—but Kevin will. If Nathaniel is here to convince Kevin of something, he'd be better off waiting til morning.

Andrew slips one of his knives out of his armband. Just in case. 

Nathaniel picks the lock to the bedroom. He could've just asked Andrew for a key, but he didn't, took the time to pick the lock. Andrew is just curious enough that he would've let Nathaniel in. He might be fast, but he's never been stronger than Andrew. 

Nathaniel pauses before opening the door, looking over at Andrew again. “I think you should stay out here.”

Andrew doesn't plan on staying out here, which Nathaniel should know. He knows all of Andrew's weaknesses. He knows everything. He knows—

Oh.

He doesn't know Andrew. How can he not know? Nathaniel's memory isn't photographic, but Andrew made up a pretty significant portion of his aborted freshman year. When they weren't fighting, they were making out on the roof. That's pretty memorable. _Andrew_ is pretty memorable.

He's reminded of the time he saw Megan at the mall after he'd already moved on to Cass's house. He waved at Megan, and she looked right past him. He lived in her house for two years, would never get her or her husband out of his memory, and he didn't even leave enough of a mark on her to be worth a hello.

“Like I said,” Nathaniel says when Andrew follows him in. “Your funeral.”

He lunges for Andrew then, a knife appearing in his hand out of nowhere. Andrew blocks him with an arm, brandishing his own knife to demonstrate that he isn't defenseless. Nathaniel looks vaguely surprised at that, but he doesn't give up, struggling with Andrew until Andrew gets lucky and pins him against the wall.

He's definitely stronger than he used to be. If Andrew were a little more reckless with his life, Nathaniel could probably win the fight. But right now, Andrew has one hand restraining Neil's knife arm above his head and the other pressing a knife against his throat.

“You must be Andrew Minyard,” Nathaniel says. “I know all about you.”

He doesn't. He doesn't know anything. He probably knows what he read in some file about Andrew's history, maybe about Andrew's protectiveness over Kevin. He doesn't know anything good. He doesn't _remember_ anything good.

“Who else am I going to find in there?” Nathaniel asks. “Your cousin Nicholas? Your brother and sworn protector, cleared of murder because he was defending his twin?” Nathaniel's smile might as well be a slash from his knife. “You want to watch both of them die too?”

Andrew isn't going to move. He can protect all of them. Nathaniel is stronger than he used to be, but he's not stronger or smarter than Andrew, and he doesn't know that Andrew has killed for Aaron before and would do it again. His deal was with Neil, not Nathaniel. And Neil ended their deal anyway. And it was only supposed to last to the end of Neil's freshman year. Andrew isn't under contract. Andrew can push and slide and kill Nathaniel right now and not feel a thing about it.

Nathaniel says, “Yes or no?”

Whatever dam was protecting Andrew from all of this bursts. He wants to throw up. Okay, so maybe he _can't_ kill Nathaniel. But he can knock him out. He has to knock him out. Or at least restrain him in some way. Tie him up. Call Wymack. Call Renee. Call someone. He has to do something, has to find a way to fix this or get out now, because he can feel himself coming untethered. 

“Come on, Minyard,” Nathaniel says, free hand slowly rising toward Andrew's knife arm. “You want your family to come out of this alive, right? Let me go, and I'll get Kevin, and Aaron and Nicholas won't have to feel a thing.”

The bedroom door opens. “What's going on, Andrew? You're being loud as—”

Nicky stops, takes in the scene in front of him. His eyes widen. 

“Holy shit. Holy shit. _Neil_? What are you—are you—? How long have you—you're _alive_? We looked _everywhere_ for you, seriously, ask Andrew, we even went to Manchester to see your uncle, and it was just—like a ghost. You disappeared.”

Nathaniel looks taken aback. “This is sad, Andrew. He'll have to die. But you can still keep your brother alive.” 

Nicky seems to understand that he hasn't caught Andrew and Nathaniel in the compromising position he thought he had. “Wait, what's going on? Is this a sex thing? Because I love you both, but I don't really want to take part in—”

“This is not Neil,” Andrew says. 

Nicky looks more surprised at the sound of Andrew's voice than he did at Nathaniel's appearance. “Oh. So he, like, actually pulled a knife on you?” He pauses, looks around the room. “I mean, I feel like we should have a welcome home party or something, right?” He pulls one of the desk chairs toward them, presumably to sit down in. “Neil? Are you in? We can call the upperclassmen. Matt's just across the hall.”

“Who the hell is Neil?” Nathaniel says, perplexed. 

Something in Nicky's expression shifts. It's one of his “oh poor you” faces, the one he reserves especially for Neil. “You used to be,” he says. 

Nathaniel loses patience. His hand wraps around Andrew's wrist and twists up, so that Andrew slashes at his own jaw. Andrew drops the knife and punches Nathaniel, but Nathaniel finally breaks out of his grip and darts forward with his knife.

Then he crumples to the floor, because Nicky hit him with the chair. 

“Holy shit,” Nicky says. “Holy shit. What the fuck is going on? Did I just kill Neil?”

Andrew stoops to check, but Nathaniel is still very much alive. He also has a gun. Andrew removes it from its holster and ignores Nicky's startled reaction to it. 

They haul Nathaniel into their bedroom, where Aaron is still dutifully pretending to be asleep.

“Can you give us a hand?” Nicky says, breathing already labored even though he literally plays a sport where his entire job is to be bigger and stronger than the opposition strikers. “Your brother wasn't hooking up with anyone, he was getting attacked by some fucked up version of Neil.”

Kevin is already standing up, pressed against the wall, wide eyes on Nathaniel like he's seeing—well. A ghost.

“You're bleeding,” Aaron says as he approaches, reaching for Andrew's chin and dropping his hand when Andrew makes eye contact. “Did he cut you?”

“There was a scuffle,” Nicky says, dry. “Neil got Andrew, but luckily Andrew had his super-cousin close by to avenge him.”

With Aaron's help, getting Nathaniel onto Andrew's bed is easy. They use someone's necktie, a couple of shoelaces, and two belts to restrain him. Nathaniel's eyes flicker open just as Andrew secures the last tie around his wrist. Luckily Riko left them a blueprint for where to put them. 

Nathaniel looks completely different from moments before, when he was ready to kill every one of them to cover his tracks. His eyes are wild, and he strains against the ties, mouth opening like he's going to scream.

“Should we gag him?” Aaron says. 

“ _No_ ,” Nathaniel says, dropping flat on the bed like good behavior will somehow save him. “Don't. Don't. _Please_.”

Andrew doesn't flinch, but it's a close thing.

“Any idea what's going on here, Kevin?” Nicky says.

Andrew drags his eyes away from Nathaniel onto Kevin, who is still pressed against the wall, petrified. Of course. Of course he would know.

Kevin's eyes meet Andrew's. Andrew hopes the threat is clear. 

“It's not real,” Kevin says, voice barely above a whisper. “It can't be real.”

“What can't be real?” Nicky says.

“They had—it was just a rumor.” His fingers scrabble against the wall behind him. Andrew steps away from Nathaniel, who has regressed to silently shaking. Andrew put bruises on Kevin's throat the last time he needed to know what happened to Neil, and this time will be no different if Kevin doesn't fucking talk. “They said the Moriyamas had access to a Russian method of mind control.”

“That's not possible,” Aaron says. “This isn't Captain America. It's not Aladdin. You can't just control someone's mind.”

“It was some combination of torture and psychological conditioning. But it could not be real. They always needed a test subject, and if it had been real, they would have used me. Or Jean.”

“It's looking pretty real, Kevin,” Nicky says. He looks back at Andrew. “I'm calling Coach.”

*

Wymack must speed to Fox Tower, because he gets there only twenty minutes later. By then Neil's other Foxes are hovering near Nathaniel, all but Renee looking completely terrified.

“Coach, we need to get him to a hospital,” Dan says. This argument has been ongoing for the past quarter of an hour, Renee giving Nathaniel sips of her water out of the apparent goodness of her heart, Dan trying to convince them all to trust the same institutions that got them all in this mess in the first place. Andrew has not taken part. “Look at him, he has no idea who he is, he's been trying to get out of his ties this whole time—”

“At some point he just started threatening us,” Matt says. “Nicky offered to hit him in the head again.”

“Hit him in the head?” Wymack repeats, looking over at Nathaniel and the blood bleeding off the cut on his head. “Why did you do that?”

“He was going to kill Andrew,” Nicky says, a little defensively. “Plus—isn't there a thing where if someone's been mind controlled you can hit them in the head and reset it?”

“I don't think we know enough about mind control to make that call!”

“But I—” Nicky stops and turns to Nathaniel. They all turn to Nathaniel.

His phone is ringing.

“Oh, fuck,” Matt says. “Can anyone do a good Neil impression?”

“I can do a good Neil impression,” Nathaniel says. 

“Oh, he's making jokes now,” Dan says. “Definitely not our Neil.” She plucks the phone out of his front pocket and tosses it to Allison, who puts it on speaker before it goes to voicemail.

“Yeah?” Allison says in a passable Neil Josten impersonation. 

“Where the fuck are you?” the person on the other end says. Nathaniel jerks up in Andrew's bed, and Dan presses a hand over his mouth to silence him. “You're supposed to be done by now. Security just asked me why I'm loitering.”

Renee, who hasn't said anything since she got here and saw the state of Nathaniel, meets Andrew's eyes. He gestures to his dresser, and she turns to dig around in it.

“What did you tell them?” Allison says. 

“That I'm an Uber and my fucking passenger is fucking late. Hurry the fuck up, get Day, and get out of there. Unless there's something I need to worry about.”

“Nope,” Allison says, maybe too quickly. “I'll hurry.” 

She hangs up and drops the phone on the floor like it burns, turning to Wymack. “What are we going to do?”

“I will take care of it,” Renee says now that she has some of Andrew's knives. She turns to Nathaniel. “Does he have a gun?”

“Like I'm going to tell you.”

“If you don't want to be gagged, you'll fucking tell her,” Aaron says. It's nice that Andrew doesn't have to step in. His twin can just read his mind. “You think you're the only person here capable of murder?”

Nathaniel's jaw clenches. “There's one in the car, but it's in the back.”

Renee leaves. Matt says, “If she's not back in fifteen minutes—”

“We'll get the information out of him,” Aaron says. He seems to hate Nathaniel even more than he hated Neil. It's almost touching. “Kevin says he got tortured. We can torture.”

“Jesus, Aaron.”

“Are you surprised?” Nathaniel says. “He's a murderer. Why wouldn't he be okay with torture?”

“It was self-defense,” Nicky says. He sounds even more wrecked than Nathaniel. “You were _there_ , how can you not—”

Nathaniel Wesninski, alias Neil Josten, key eyewitness. Nowhere to be found. Andrew had to put up with twice the questioning to make up for it. He remembers the lawyer asking him question after question, as if being a foster child were a risk factor for lying and not for being a victim of sexual abuse. He remembers Cass staring back at him. Another ghost. 

He didn't feel anything. He was thinking about Neil the entire time.

“Kill me like you killed Andrew's brother,” Nathaniel says. “Do it. I dare you.”

Aaron tears his gaze away from Nathaniel, looks at Andrew. “I,” he says.

They haven't talked about it. The only words they've ever exchanged about Drake have been about the logistics of the trial. Maybe they would have, in a different life, if Neil hadn't disappeared right when Aaron and Andrew were on the cusp of starting to talk again, if anything at all had gone to plan at the end of Neil's freshman year.

Andrew isn't here to comfort Aaron. He stares back coolly, waits for Aaron to look away. 

“Are you just going to keep me tied up all night?” Nathaniel says. He accepts another sip of Renee's drink when Dan offers it to him. “Not that it's not fun, I'm just starting to get bored.”

“You didn't look bored when you woke up,” Aaron says. “You looked fucking terrified.” 

What scared him so much? Being restrained, or being restrained in a bed? Waking up in unfamiliar territory, or waking up to all of their faces?

“He's right,” Wymack says. “We can't keep him tied up like this. We should go to the police or take him to the hospital.”

Andrew remembers getting laughed out of three different Baltimore police stations the summer after Neil disappeared. Nathan Wesninski? Kidnap his own child? No way. He's a model citizen. He's been mourning the death of his wife for years. He was delighted to see his son. He paid for our station to be remodeled, look. 

“If we give him to the police or the hospital, he will be returned to his father,” Andrew says. 

Wymack is the only one who doesn't look surprised to hear him. Andrew doesn't know when the last time he spoke around any of the rest of them was.

“I think I'm stronger than this necktie,” Nathaniel says, very conversationally. He's trying to distract the Foxes; the necktie is securing one of his ankles to the bed, but he's been working at the belt on his right wrist for the last few minutes. “What do you think, Andrew?”

He probably is. 

“You really don't remember any of us?” Dan asks, resting on the edge of the bed like Nathaniel is a hospital patient and not a dangerous blank slate.

Nathaniel's steely expression falters. Andrew feels a surge of the same hatred that made him kiss Neil in the first place.

“I remember—orange,” he says, looking over at Kevin. “And pain.”

Kevin whispers, “I'm sorry.”

“Fuck you,” Nathaniel says. “If I didn't have to deliver you to your owners, I'd kill you right now.”

“Someone knock him out again before he convinces Kevin to kill himself out of sheer guilt,” Allison says. “Seriously. His hand is loose.”

“I could get the chair,” Nicky suggests.

“No need,” Dan says. “Renee crushed a few sleeping pills into that water he's been chugging. He should be out in a few minutes.”

Nathaniel doesn't even look surprised. Maybe he's already decided not to fight off the sleepiness. “You know sleeping pills don't actually knock you out, right?” he asks, and when no one answers, adds, “Fine. I'm going to sleep. See you all in the morning.”

*

“The only thing to do is try to remind him,” Wymack says the next morning, when they're in the lounge part of Andrew's suite. Renee and Matt are with Nathaniel. Andrew should probably have stayed, but he thinks he's teetering so dangerously on the edge right now that it would be unlikely for both of them to leave the room alive. “We can spend the day with him, but we don't have that much time. Renee took care of his handler, but they're going to figure out Nathaniel is missing eventually.”

“Speaking of which, exactly what did she do to his handler?” Nicky asks. “How illegal do we think it was?”

Nicky is an idiot. 

“If we can get him back to himself by the end of the day, we'll take it from there,” Wymack says.

“Otherwise, what?” Dan says. “We drug him again and dump him on the side of the road? Coach, it's _Neil_.”

“We can't force him to stay here.”

“But he's not in his right mind—he's not making normal choices, he wouldn't be doing any of this if it weren't for this, whatever, _mind control_ thing.”

“He needs a doctor,” Wymack says. “We'll have Betsy make a house call, and she can let us know what she thinks. Until then—” He looks at Andrew. “Keep him in your room?”

Andrew should say no. His brother and Kevin will both be in the room at the same time as a literal assassin whose entire goal in coming here was to kidnap Kevin and who displayed absolutely no qualms at the notion of having to kill Andrew and his family to eliminate eyewitnesses.

But then he didn't. He had the chance, and he didn't take it.

Andrew shrugs. If Kevin and Aaron are fine with it, who is he to step in their way?

They all go back to bed like it's just a normal night. Andrew drags a beanbag into the bedroom and curls up in it, watching as Kevin, Aaron, and Nicky settle back in. 

Nathaniel says something. All of them look at him, but his eyes are still closed.

He says something else.

“What language is that?” Nicky whispers. “It's not German.”

“Russian,” Aaron supplies from his bunk above Andrew's. “Or something like that.”

All those business deals in Russia. Money laundering, Andrew thought. This was what they were washing off their hands. Torture and psychological manipulation of someone who'd already been a victim of abuse his entire life. They took a terrified teenager and turned him into a weapon. They took someone who belonged to Andrew and broke him. He's never liked sharing. His face, his body, his _people_.

“Do we know anyone who speaks Russian?” Nicky whispers.

Andrew tries to get comfortable on the beanbag he dragged in. 

He sleeps. Eventually.

*

Andrew is woken by the sound of someone thrashing.

Obviously, it's Nathaniel, terrified, trying to break out of his restraints again, babbling in Russian. Andrew watches from his beanbag until Nathaniel makes eye contact, and then he texts Wymack that Nathaniel is up.

 _bring him to practice_ , Wymack replies, which is presumptuous because Andrew wasn't really planning on going to practice.

“Hey. Nathaniel,” Nicky says, already off his bed and kneeling by Nathaniel. Aaron is perched on his own bed, wary. Kevin hasn't moved. “Relax. You're safe.” 

“Then let me _go_ ,” Nathaniel says, pulling at one restraint so hard that the fake leather of the belt finally gives in. 

Nathaniel might be reaching for a weapon, or he might be reaching for his other ties to undo them, or he might just be flexing his wrists. Andrew doesn't take any chances. He shoves Nicky out of the way and presses the tip of a knife against Nathaniel's throat.

Nathaniel freezes. Then he starts to talk. “I'm going. I'll leave you alone. I just need to get out of here. Untie me. I need to get up. I can't feel my ankles. Please, I need to—”

“I don't like that word,” Andrew says. He wonders if he could do it, push hard enough to kill. He's never killed anyone like this, taken that final action himself. It's not like jerking a steering wheel in the wrong direction. Pressing a blade into skin is easy, but Andrew has never been able to leap that last hurdle, from cutting to killing. 

“Andrew, what's the plan?” Nicky asks. “Are we going to practice?”

Andrew shows him Wymack's text with his free hand. Nathaniel watches Andrew's movements like he might lash out at any moment.

“This is so fucked up,” Nicky says. “Okay. Fine. Nathaniel, you're coming to exy practice with us.”

“What?”

“I mean, we can't force you,” Nicky continues. “Obviously. But you said you remembered orange. Don't you want to know why?”

Nathaniel's gaze shifts from Andrew to Nicky. “Yes.”

“No weapons, though. We took your gun already. What else you got?”

“Let me loose and I'll show you,” Nathaniel says.

“Very funny.” Nicky looks to Andrew, a little hesitant, but he's been trying to speak for Andrew for the last two years. He can read Andrew better than most. “Tell Andrew where they are.”

Andrew doesn't want to touch Nathaniel any more than he has to, but he plucks Nathaniel's hidden knives away clinically anyway, even slides a syringe out of his pants pocket.

“Jesus,” Nicky says. “What is that?”

“Tranquilizer,” Nathaniel replies. “It was supposed to make it easier to get Kevin out.”

“You're saying we could've used that instead of drugging you?” 

“That's your go-to, isn't it?” Nathaniel says, which is fair, except—how does he know that?

“What?” Nicky says, glancing over at Andrew again. 

“The chair. The sleeping pills. You just go for the most obvious solution. Blunt force.”

Oh. 

“I could've probably stayed awake,” Nathaniel says. “But it seemed like you guys were really happy with your little Ambien plan. Besides, it's easier to break free when there are only four other people in the room.”

“We aren't keeping you prisoner,” Aaron says. He turns toward Andrew, who stares a few inches to the left of Aaron's shoulder. “If you want to go, go.”

“I—” Nathaniel twists a little, narrowly avoiding nicking himself on Andrew's knife. He makes eye contact with Kevin. “I have a task.”

“Or you want to know more about who you were,” Kevin says. He has that stupid look on his face. Grim determination. Like he thinks love of exy and willpower are enough to fix all his problems. Andrew wasn't aware he cared. “You couldn't resist in Millport, either.”

“What the fuck is Millport?”

“It's where we met,” Kevin says.

Nathaniel holds his gaze for a moment longer. Then he says, “I do want to know.”

“Okay then,” Nicky says. “Get up. We're going to the Foxhole Court.”

*

Thanks to Kevin, usually Andrew gets his lot to practice roughly on time. They are almost always there before the freshmen, rarely before Dan.

But today Dan and Matt are waiting outside Andrew's car.

“We're going to follow you,” Matt says. “Just in case.”

“I'm driving,” Nicky says, waving Andrew's keys. He doesn't have a copy himself, but exceptions need to be made. “Andrew's on Nathaniel duty.”

Behind him, Nathaniel looks anomalous on their campus. Black sweater, black cargo pants, all those scars—he doesn't fit in with the mess of athletes on their way to practice. 

He stops when he gets to the car, frowning a little.

“Is this the right car?” he says, looking up at Nicky.

“Yup. 2010 Honda Civic in Milano red.”

“Get in,” Aaron says, waiting. He must assume Nathaniel is going to sit in the middle. Andrew doesn't intend to let that happen.

“But—” Nathaniel makes a face. “Are you sure? I thought—” He turns to Andrew. “Didn't you have a nicer car than this?”

“What?” Dan says. She sounds hopeful, but she shouldn't. Nathaniel probably read about it in research.

“Or at least—it was black, right?”

“Do you remember that?” Nicky asks. He also sounds hopeful. Pathetic.

“I don't know. I just feel like—this is the wrong car. Right?”

“It is new,” Kevin says, which is generous. “We need to get to practice. Get in the car.”

*

It goes fine. Nathaniel sits in the stands a few rows away from Andrew, watching the Foxes practice with apparently rapt attention. He looks at Andrew a little curiously when it becomes evident that Andrew has no intention of playing, but then he goes back to watching.

“I played this?” he says a little later, when Dan is shouting at the team to get in formation. “What position?”

Andrew ignores him. Kevin can fill Nathaniel in on the exy if Nathaniel really wants to know. Maybe Nathaniel will take Kevin off his hands at the end of it and Andrew can finally leave this place for good.

*

The Foxes spend the entire day with Nathaniel. The new Foxes seem to think he's a potential coaching recruit shadowing Wymack; the original Foxes run with the idea.

Bee comes by. Her gaze lingers on Andrew when she sees him. He resolutely does not look back. She meets privately with Nathaniel and emerges from the room an hour later, looking the way she always does when people spill their problems to her. Somehow okay with it. Comforting. Sympathetic. 

She tells them that, while the concept of mind control seems ludicrous, repression memories associated with severe trauma is not that uncommon. She tells them he might be able to access those memories. She tells them he is obviously scared.

Andrew stares out the window of Fox Tower. Next door is another residence hall. Almost every window is closed and has the shades pulled down.

“Look, I'm not making this decision for you,” Wymack tells everyone. “We have the funds to pay for private security if you want to do this, but you all have to decide to do it. You're putting yourselves in danger. You get to decide if it's worth the risk.”

“Security for what?” Aaron says. “Are we protecting him from his father's people or us from him?”

“He wouldn't hurt us,” Nicky says. “You saw him on that bed, Aaron. They hurt him.”

“Coach, it's _Neil_ ,” Dan says. “If we can just—get him back. He remembered Andrew's Maserati, I know he did, and if he remembers that, think what else he can remember.”

“We can remind him,” Matt says. “He was so into exy at practice today. Maybe we can get him back on the court.” He turns to Kevin. “Right? You can go back to training him, catch him up? He obviously stayed in shape.”

Kevin looks to Andrew for guidance. Andrew stares back, impassive.

“If he wants to stay,” Kevin says, “I can train him. Andrew will come with us.”

Nathaniel says, “Are you all making decisions about my life without asking me again?”

Everyone turns except for Andrew, who was already looking in that direction. Freshly showered, in some of the old clothing Matt didn't throw away—sentimental—he almost looks like Neil. 

“We can't make you stay,” Dan says. “If you want to go—then I guess you'll go. But if you want to stay, you can.”

“You've only missed the first week of the semester, so there is still time to get enrolled in classes,” Wymack says. “You'd have to rejoin the exy team to keep your scholarship, and if you're unable to play anymore, you'll have to find another way to pay for it.”

“This is completely my decision?” Nathaniel says, eyebrow raised.

“Well, if everyone agrees they're willing to take the risk, yeah, staying or not is up to you.”

“The risk,” Nathaniel repeats.

“I can protect you from the outside,” Wymack says. “I can't protect them from you.”

“You're all worried I'm going to kill you in the middle of the night?” Nathaniel gazes at Kevin of all people, which is almost funny because Kevin has legitimate reason to worry. “Then why haven't you gotten rid of me yet?”

“We want you back,” Matt says. “I miss my friend.”

“You think he can come back?” Nathaniel asks. “Your friend. You think I'll remember?”

“You remembered Andrew's car,” Matt says. 

“And orange,” Dan adds.

“But if you say yes,” Wymack says, “you're responsible for staying in control. The second any of my Foxes is in danger, we get the police involved.”

“Okay,” Nathaniel says. “If everyone agrees. I'll stay.”

*

Everyone agrees. Even Aaron, who doesn't cast his vote until he checks Andrew for injury again.

Andrew doesn't say anything. They take that for his assent. It feels more like plausible deniability. If Nathaniel slaughters them all, Andrew can say he was outnumbered. 

“Hey, Andrew,” Dan says, when everyone has gone back to the bedroom and Andrew is waiting for Kevin to decide if he wants to go to the court tonight or not. “Can I have a word?”

She can talk. Andrew follows her out of the suite.

“Coach wanted me to ask you.” She wavers. “You haven't been to see Bee since the beginning of the semester.”

Andrew looks back at her coolly.

“I think you should talk to her. I know you haven't been going for a while, but—with all this, maybe it's worth it.”

Dan is such a busybody. Andrew leaves her standing in the hallway and goes up to the roof for a cigarette.

*

It's Kevin's idea to show Nathaniel old game videos of Neil playing exy. He starts with Neil's first game; Andrew suspects Kevin also wants to iron out any flaws Nathaniel might have as an exy player, get him back on the team, and try to win championships this year. That would be just like Kevin.

Nathaniel sits a little too close to Kevin, familiar already, like he wasn't plotting to drag him out of Fox Tower kicking and screaming just last night. Andrew reclines on the beanbag, watching out of the corner of his eye while Nicky and Aaron pretend to pay attention to video games.

“That's me,” Nathaniel says. 

Andrew glances up; the video has zoomed in on Neil getting on the court while Allison helps Seth off it. Neil takes his position. The camera focuses on him for a moment too long, then zooms back out. The Andrew on the screen bangs his racquet against the floor. Andrew remembers: _Pinocchio_ , he said. _Time to run._.

Gorilla's racquet checks on Kevin are so violent that Kevin keeps dropping his racquet. Andrew remembers that, too, Kevin's terror that he'd get injured, that he'd be forced off the court again. It's almost understandable that he's so obsessed with staying healthy. The camera focuses on Andrew again as he peels off Kevin's glove to check for damage. 

And then Neil scores his first goal, too fast for Leverett, surprisingly powerful. Nathaniel swears. Kevin is watching his face. 

“Ten bucks says he's back on the court within a week,” Aaron says under his breath.

“Twenty-four hours,” Nicky replies. 

“Do you think I can still do that?” Nathaniel asks.

“This is not very good,” Kevin says. “You—Neil improved as the season went on.”

“He did?” A pause, and then Nathaniel turns to Andrew. “You didn't look like you were trying.”

Andrew remembers that game. Coming off his meds. How badly he needed to throw up as they wore off.

“But you're good. I don't get it.” Nathaniel's face screws up. “You didn't practice the other day. You just sat in the bleachers with me. I thought you were a sub or something, or maybe just not even on the team.”

“He doesn't play anymore,” Aaron says.

Nathaniel's eyes close. “You shut a team out in the second half. They were wearing green.”

“Oh, shit,” Nicky says. “Oh, fuck. He remembers. Andrew—”

No. Andrew swallows whatever feeling is trying to claw its way up his throat. He can't let himself want it. He can't _hope_. 

“Who wears green?” Aaron says.

“The Binghamton Bearcats,” Kevin says. “Which was—”

Neil's last game. 

“You remember that?” Nicky says. “Are you sure?”

“Not that much,” Nathaniel admits. “Just Andrew making saves.”

“Bee said he could remember! She was right, look—”

“He hated her,” Aaron says. Andrew wonders how he knows that.

“But Nathaniel doesn't know that.”

“You think this version of him is going to be more likely to talk than the last one?”

Aaron and Nicky both turn to Andrew like he can possibly solve this problem for them. He ignores them.

“Why did I hate her?” Nathaniel asks.

Nicky hesitates. “Neil was always—reluctant to talk, I guess you could say.” 

Nathaniel accepts this with a nod, as if he's agreeing with his own former self. “Shrinks are full of shit.”

“Well, you're under Russian mind control, so it's not like you're much better,” Aaron says. 

“Just give it a chance,” Nicky says. “Maybe you'll like her.”

“Or maybe he'll murder her.”

“I haven't killed anyone just because I felt like it,” Nathaniel says. 

“But you have killed people.”

“So have you.” 

Aaron's mouth opens like he's going to say something. He looks at Andrew again and changes his mind. Andrew doesn't know why they all think _he's_ the one in charge. Just because they figured out he and Neil had a thing, doesn't mean he's Neil's keeper. Their deal was already done when he disappeared. Neil made him call it off himself. 

“That's cold, Neil—Nathaniel,” Nicky says.

“Fine,” Nathaniel says. “Can I come to practice with you?”

“Wymack will have to get you re-registered for the team before you can play an official game,” Kevin says. “But practice should not be a problem.” He twists in his chair, makes eye contact with Andrew. “What do you think?”

Andrew doesn't care. If Kevin wants to put himself on an exy court with an assassin carrying a giant metal stick, well, it's his problem. Maybe exy practices will finally be interesting again.

*

And so the Bring Back Neil Project takes its next steps on an exy court. They put him in Neil's old helmet and jersey, give him Neil's old racquet. Kevin and Wymack kept them out of sentiment. Andrew wishes now that he'd taken more initiative when that decision was made, burned all of them himself.

Maybe it's muscle memory, or maybe it's just his new strength, but Nathaniel is roughly as good as Neil was. He slams balls past Robin and Renee like it's nothing, links up with Kevin like they didn't miss a single day of practice. He's rusty around the edges—sometimes he misses simple passes or fails to set up a shot properly—but he's as efficient as ever. His spot on the team, a hole since Neil disappeared despite a new set of strikers, finally looks filled. 

Andrew watches half-assedly from the bleachers. It's a little like seeing a ghost. He feels not quite real around the edges. That Josten jersey. The number ten. 

But then something shifts. Andrew sits up: Nathaniel is stalking off the court, Kevin scampering behind him. 

No, wait. Not off the court. Right up to the plexiglass in front of Andrew.

Nathaniel bangs on the glass, glaring at Andrew. Andrew ignores him, even when he bangs again, more insistently. Use your words, Andrew thinks. That was how Neil always did it.

Finally, Nathaniel pushes past Dan and opens the door to the stands, climbing right up to Andrew.

“Are you not going to play?” Nathaniel says.

Andrew lets his head loll to the side to look at Kevin, who is hovering close by. No doubt he put Nathaniel up to this. Even now, still a mini-me.

“Come on,” Nathaniel says. “Aren't you bored?”

Bored? _Bored_?

“Is exy supposed to change that?” Andrew asks, which is more than Kevin was expecting judging by the way his head jerks up at the sound of Andrew's voice.

“I've seen videos of you,” Nathaniel says. “I _remember_ you. You're good. Why are you wasting everyone's time riding the bench?”

Because Neil still owes him from last time. _Anything_ , he promised, and _I'm sorry_ , and _Thank you. You were amazing._

“It's not worth it,” Kevin says. “He does not even have a racquet.”

Andrew doesn't, but he'd bet anything Kevin is keeping one somewhere for him. That's the thing about Kevin. He might be useless, but he never gives up. Not even on Andrew. 

“Come on,” Nathaniel says again. “You're better than both of them. Play with us.”

“Why should I?” Andrew says.

“I'll trade you for it.”

What's that old parable about the frog and the hot water? Nathaniel hasn't even been here a week and Andrew already can't think straight around him. It's the fucking Josten jersey, the way the helmet covers most of the cosmetic differences between Neil and Nathaniel. “What would you give me?”

“What would you take?”

Andrew bites back his natural response to that. “The truth.”

Neil Josten was a liar. Time to find out if that's an inherent trait or not.

“Okay,” Nathaniel says. “Whatever you want to know. I'm an open book.”

Yeah, with all the pages ripped out. 

Andrew stands up. Kevin's mouth drops open like this wasn't exactly his plan from the beginning. 

“I have your racquet,” Kevin says quickly, practically tripping over himself to fetch it. Yup. “It's in my locker.”

Andrew takes it when Kevin gets back, closes his hand around his name and number, tests the racquet in his grip. It's been months since he picked one of these up with any intention of swinging it. 

When he makes his way past the plexiglass, he can feel every eye in the court on him. He ignores them and gets in front of the empty goal.

Nathaniel grins. He looks, for a moment, like a post-win Neil.

“Ready?” Nathaniel calls. 

Andrew doesn't answer him. He hasn't practiced exy in months, but it's not like his muscles have atrophied. He's never spent more time in the gym in his life. He spars with Renee all the time. Not to stay sharp, more because he needs to hit something that reacts and if it isn't a willing participant it'll have to be an unwilling one. 

Andrew is strong and dangerous, is the point. As dangerous as ever.

Play restarts. Kevin makes the first shot; Andrew lets it roll in past his ankle. Kevin doesn't even seem to care, just collects the ball and jogs back to half-court. 

The next ball comes from Nathaniel. It's instinct for Andrew to put his racquet up to block it, instinct to angle it toward his own team's striker, instinct to fall back into the usual exy trappings. It would take more effort to do nothing than it takes to stop Nathaniel's shots. 

Nevertheless, Kevin is watching him like somehow he is the one who has triumphed. Braindead sentimental Kevin Day, saving Andrew's exy things, saving Neil's, hopeful that both of them would come back. The most irritating thing is that Andrew and Nathaniel have actually proven him right.

After practice, Andrew leaves Nathaniel with the older Foxes and goes out to the roof for a cigarette and as much alcohol as he can stomach. This was a bad idea. They should've killed him on night one and told his handler never to come back here. They should've let him take Kevin. Then at least Andrew wouldn't have to put up with all this. The guilt at letting Kevin out of his sight would be better, Andrew thinks, than the way his insides seem to be clawing themselves apart.

The door to the roof opens and then closes. Not again. Andrew can't do this again. It feels too much like last time—the tradeoffs, Nathaniel getting him to do things he doesn't want to do, following him up to the roof, asking him questions, answering, _lying_ —

“Kevin said you come up here sometimes,” Nathaniel says, sitting up on the ledge next to Andrew like it's nothing. Like he can look down and not care a whit. Andrew feels that old urge to push him. “What truth did you want to know?”

“Why are you still here?” Andrew says. 

He could have left in the middle of the night. He could have snuck out whenever. The Foxes driving him to and from practice and to meet with tutors is more a show of solidarity than it is a real security measure. 

“I wanted to talk to you about that. Or—” Nathaniel looks out beyond the roof, at campus in the late afternoon. It's full of orange-clad students this time of day, going to the library or dinner or getting ready to go out. Andrew thinks keeping this time bomb here is going to devastate a lot of people. “I wanted to talk to someone, and everyone keeps telling me it should be you.”

It isn't an answer. Andrew waits for one.

“I don't know how they do it,” Nathaniel says. “Get me to—do things, I mean. They call me, and it's like my brain just—stops working. I remember the phone ringing, and then pain, and then just the urge to listen to whatever they say. Being here it's like—almost like clarity. Like I can finally tell the difference between what _I_ want and what the people telling me what to do want.”

“Who are they?”

“Who?”

“The people telling you what to do.”

Nathaniel sighs. “I don't always know. Sometimes it's my father or his people. Sometimes they rent me out. I was sent here to repay a debt. Kevin's return to the Moriyamas would clear the red on my father's ledger.” 

“Why were you so scared when you woke up here?” Andrew asks. He has a feeling he knows, but he needs to hear it from Nathaniel. He wants to know how to reset Nathaniel's brain again if they need to.

“I thought I was there again. I don't exactly know where 'there' is. Everyone spoke Russian, and they always had me tied down. I just remember feeling so much pain then. I can't remember anything else.”

“Except orange.”

“Yeah.” Nathaniel looks at Andrew, brow furrowing. “That's the other reason I wanted to stay. I remember holding on to it like it was a lifeline. But it's just a color. It didn't make sense until I got here.”

He wasn't just holding on to a color. He was holding on to the Foxes. Touching.

“I think I was trying to stay who I was,” Nathaniel says. “I think I was trying to stay Neil.”

Sentimental. All of them. 

Andrew lights a cigarette and offers the pack to Nathaniel.

“You didn't,” Andrew says. 

Nathaniel accepts the proffered cigarette, lights it, and takes a single drag. “I know. But maybe I can be again.” He cups the cigarette between his hands and brings up to his nose to inhale the scent. Andrew has to look away. “Matt and Dan say you probably know more about me—about Neil—than they do.” He waits for confirmation, and when he doesn't get it, continues: “What can you tell me about who he was before he was here?”

“A liar,” Andrew says. 

Neil spent most of their last day together, that whole long bus trip up to Binghamton, telling him about all of that. History. Right after he pried their promise out of Andrew's fingers, convinced Andrew to let him go. Right before he went. 

“Is that all?” Nathaniel says, reaching for Andrew's abandoned bottle of vodka and chugging a decent amount of it all at once.

“He also did not drink.” With one notable exception. Had his own head bashed in so he wouldn't talk.

Nathaniel puts the bottle down, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “I'm good at killing people. Doesn't mean I want to remember it.”

“He was too worried people would learn his secrets.”

Nathaniel's laugh is hollow. “What secrets? I can't even remember my name.”

“Neil was on the run,” Andrew says. He can't know how much of what Neil told him was even true. He never once mentioned his mother. “He was running away from his father.” Neil didn't tell him that, even. Kevin had to. Andrew swallows down the bile in his throat. He agreed to this. Or at least, he didn't say no. “We met in Millport, Arizona, and for reasons unknown, you had decided to call yourself Neil Josten.”

“With the dyed hair and contact lenses.” Nathaniel drops both his hands behind him and leans back. “You hit me in the stomach with a racquet. Kevin and Coach got me to sign the contract even though I didn't want to play with Kevin. Coach told me.”

“Neil worried that association with Kevin would get him caught,” Andrew says. He remembers the sharp bite of Neil's fear. Neil running, literally for his life. “He was right.”

“Do you know who I was before that?”

Names go through Andrew's head. Alex. Stefan. Chris. “He spent most of his life running. Any time people got to know him.”

“Except when he was Neil.” 

“No,” Andrew says. “He disappeared then too.”

Nathaniel looks around at him, expression scrutinizing. He won't be able to read anything in Andrew's face. Only Neil could ever really do that. 

“Why do you hate me?” Nathaniel says.

Nathaniel tried to kill Andrew, planned to kidnap Kevin, would probably have murdered Aaron and Nicky. He inserted himself into all of their lives and sent them all off kilter, got re-enrolled in classes and re-signed to the exy team under the wrong name, slotted back in like he could ever fill the vacancy Neil left. It's not the same.

“Is it—” Nathaniel's hand comes up, reaches toward Andrew, stops before touching the spot on his temple that Andrew knows bears a faint scar. “I was supposed to testify at Aaron's trial. Is that right?”

When Andrew doesn't answer, Nathaniel says, “I read the court documents. There was a name redacted all over them. At first I thought it might have been a minor, but Nicky says it was really hard for them to prove self-defense without Neil's testimony. Is that what was redacted? Neil Josten?”

“Nathaniel Wesninski,” Andrew says, “alias Neil Josten. Neil Josten never existed.”

“That must've been really hard to do alone.”

Andrew hates Nathaniel, too. He lights another cigarette. 

“I wish I'd been there,” Nathaniel says. “Or—I wish Neil had been.” He looks up at the sky. “I remember the house in Columbia. I remembered it after I first read the court documents. I can't get it out of my head.” He looks at Andrew, waiting for a reaction, and when he doesn't get one, says, “Aaron might hate me more than you do. But he got off, so I don't get why.”

They'd been right on the cusp of—something. Maybe not a full breakthrough, but going to therapy with Aaron was pushing them toward potentially one day possibly being able to have a conversation. They haven't spoken, though, since Neil disappeared. Not when Andrew carted Aaron to Baltimore, not when he dragged him on a trans-Atlantic flight, not in London, not once back here in South Carolina. Aaron is still pretending not to be dating Katelyn. That is probably why he doesn't like Nathaniel.

“Why don't you talk?” Nathaniel asks.

“I am talking.”

“But everyone else says you don't talk anymore. Why is that?”

Because all of them are so boring. Because talking got him into this mess. One conversation, and he's scrambling to get his feelings in order. _Feelings_. He didn't realize he was still capable of having them, not like this, raw, unprotected. 

He doesn't even know if he is talking right now. Maybe Nathaniel is a figment of his imagination. His brain couldn't take it anymore, so it gave him this.

Andrew takes a controlled drag of his cigarette, exhales a thin stream of smoke into Nathaniel's face. “Nothing to say.”

“Except with me?”

Andrew doesn't know how to answer him. How is he supposed to distill everything that's happened—everything he, impossibly, feels—into words that Nathaniel can understand? At least with Neil, the backstory was there. He already knew. He knew more than seemed possible, understood better than anyone else—

Fuck. Andrew is sentimental too.

He says, “Sometimes Neil was interesting. Sometimes you are, too.”

“He was your friend,” Nathaniel says. “That's why you hate me.”

Friend? “Neil was not my friend.” 

“In the games Kevin showed me, you seemed close. You and Neil, I mean. What was that?”

No one has told him. Most of the Foxes figured it out when Andrew almost strangled Kevin, but money never changed hands without a verification from Andrew. None of them have mentioned it, that Andrew and Neil were—not together, but doing _something_ , something which rapidly escalated out of Andrew's control after Neil disappeared. 

“You ask a lot of questions,” Andrew says. He pushes himself up, forces himself to be steady despite the vodka, and gets off the roof. He counts it as a win when Nathaniel does not immediately follow him.

*

“I want to go out,” Nicky announces, sprawling backward on his beanbag and glancing over at Andrew. “We haven't been to Eden's Twilight in forever.”

“I remember Eden's Twilight,” Nathaniel says. It's almost cheerful. “Or at least I think I do. Something about a map and a gas station?”

“You hitchhiked from Columbia back to Palmetto after we took you clubbing,” Nicky says. “It was really overdramatic.”

“Was Neil overdramatic?”

“Extremely,” Aaron says, changing the channel from exy replays to football. Kevin doesn't even protest. “You don't remember that, Manchurian Candidate? You climbed out the fucking window.”

“Who wouldn't, to get away from you?” Nathaniel shoots back.

Nicky laughs. Aaron shoots him a betrayed look; Nicky just shrugs. “I'm on Neil's side with this one.”

He doesn't seem to catch his mistake. Nathaniel glances over at Andrew, and Andrew makes a show of ignoring him.

*

It's not the first time someone has made the mistake, anyway. At practice last week, Dan shouted, “Move, Josten!” when Nathaniel was about to get reamed in the helmet by an errant ball. He didn't respond of course—it isn't his name anymore.

And just this morning at breakfast, Matt said, “Neil, you should come out with us after the game tonight.” Nathaniel looked up in faint surprise, and Matt said it again, “Nathaniel I mean. Allison was going to show us this bar off campus.”

“Oh,” Nathaniel said. “Okay. Sure.”

Andrew wishes he weren't around to hear any of it. He isn't surprised, really. Nathaniel is doing a very good job of being exactly as pitiful as Neil was. He is exactly the type of person everyone on this team loves. Dangerous and damaged but just vulnerable enough to be adored. 

“Okay, guys,” Dan says now. “We have Nathaniel and Andrew back in the line, so we're switching up strategy a little. Matt, you're organizing the backline for the first half as usual, but we can trust Andrew for cover. Kevin and Nathaniel, try to build up a goal advantage. Newbies, watch them. They have a really good striker partnership.”

Neil and Kevin did. Andrew wishes he had a cigarette or anything to do with his hands. He hasn't played in an official exy game in almost two years.

“This is happening strictly on a trial basis,” Dan continues. “I don't know if we'll do this when it matters during championships, but we're going to try it today.”

It's their first match of the season. The Foxes don't have much to lose. It makes sense. Dan is a risk taker, but she wouldn't risk their entire spring season. The deal is that, if tonight works out, Nathaniel will play home games for the rest of the spring season. No traveling. Andrew retains the right to decide whether to travel or stay with him. Part of him wishes the Foxes would stop making allowances for him just because they feel bad about what happened; the other part is surprised they care at all when it comes to Andrew. 

It's strange being on a court again. Andrew stands in front of the goal, rocking from foot to foot. Nathaniel is wearing a Josten jersey, a number ten helmet. 

Andrew isn't nervous. He just has no idea what is going to happen. It's been years since he felt this little control over himself. 

The game starts. The opposition attack starts off strong; they need to win to make championships. It would be benevolent for the Foxes to let them. 

They aren't planning on it. Dan wants to win championships, and the better the Foxes' seed is in the spring, the less likely they are to play someone dangerous in the early rounds.

A striker breaks past Matt and Aaron. The situation is familiar. One-on-one. Andrew has won a hundred situations just like this. 

He makes eye contact with the striker. The striker makes the shot. It goes right past Andrew's ankle. One-nothing.

The striker runs back to half-court to celebrate. Andrew shifts his weight onto his other foot.

“That's okay,” Dan calls. “That's okay. We'll get the next one. Stay organized, defense.”

The next time a striker comes near him, Andrew makes a lazy attempt to bat the ball away. He misses.

“Jesus, Andrew,” Matt shouts. 

Dan takes a time out after the third goal. She goes to talk to Wymack; they both consult with Nathaniel; Nathaniel jogs over to Andrew.

Andrew knows what's coming. Some impassioned plea. Those bright eyes.

Nathaniel weaves his fingers into Andrew's racquet. Andrew watches him do it, but it's almost like he isn't even present in the moment. Nathaniel is taking, but Andrew barely hears him. He wonders what it would take to kill Nathaniel—if he, like the rest of the stupid Foxes, would balk at his Neiliness. 

Nathaniel is saying, “Come on.” He's saying, “We need you.” 

Play restarts. Andrew leans against the wall and watches until Wymack finally subs Robin on. 

“What the fuck was that?” Wymack demands as Andrew walks off the court.

Andrew flicks a bored gaze up at him. “He is not Neil. You seem to forgotten that, but I haven't.”

“I didn't forget shit. You agreed to play. That was not fucking playing.”

It's a fair argument. Andrew doesn't like to go back on his word.

He shrugs. “Try again next time.”

“Andrew—”

“You know better, Coach.”

“Than to trust you?”

Andrew clenches his jaw as hard as he can, enjoys the press of his teeth against each other, the dull pain. Wymack stares at Andrew for another moment before letting him go to the locker room.

*

Because Andrew can't catch a break, Nathaniel follows him to the roof after the game.

“I scored,” Nathaniel says. “Is it always like that?”

Andrew taps the bottom of a new pack of cigarettes. He unwraps the plastic methodically, withdraws one, and lights it. 

When he doesn't get an answer, Nathaniel steps closer and says, “Why didn't you bother?”

“Exy is boring.”

“Then why play at all?”

Andrew doesn't even know. He takes as big a drag of his cigarette as he can. “Don't you have plans tonight?”

“I told them to go alone. I wanted to talk to you.”

That can't be good. Andrew wonders what he figured out.

Nathaniel steals the cigarette from between Andrew's loose fingers. “I think I have to ask you something.”

Andrew exhales through his teeth. “That is what we've been doing since you got here.”

“I want to know what this was,” Nathaniel says, cupping the cigarette between his hands. Andrew thinks of the Josten jersey, orange and wrong. “Before I disappeared.”

“There was no this.” Andrew tilts his head back to look up at the sky. There is barely anything to see: a few stars scattered throughout. A plane's blinking lights. “This was nothing.”

“Then why does everyone keep dancing around us? Why did Kevin apologize to you? Why does everyone keep deferring to you when it's my life they're all dealing with? Why did Wymack ask me if we've figured our shit out yet?” He narrows bright blue eyes at Andrew. Neil never did that. “Why did he think I could get you to play? What were we?”

“Nothing,” Andrew says.

Nathaniel steps closer. He smells like Andrew's cigarettes now. Andrew's cigarettes and blood. Andrew might be imagining the latter. 

“Then why couldn't I kill you?” Nathaniel asks. He comes closer still. Andrew digs a finger into the hollow at the base of Nathaniel's throat to stop him. It shouldn't be enough, but it is. Nathaniel stops in his tracks. “I had you. I was going to slit your throat with your own knife. I was going to kill Nicky, too, and then it would've been lucky if Aaron were still asleep. But I couldn't kill you.”

“Because Nicky hit you with a chair.”

Nathaniel shakes his head. “Before that. I wanted to go for your throat. I cut your jaw instead. What were you to me?”

“Nothing.”

“To Neil, then?”

To Neil. Like it's a verb. To Neil: to pretend you're someone you aren't so effectively that you actually become that person. To Neil: to infuriate Andrew to the point of murder. To Neil: to disappear completely for almost two years and come back a different person. To Neil: to peel back Andrew's skin and dig your fingers in like a medical examiner, weighing organs and testing bodily functions. To Neil: to get down on your knees and beg. To Neil: to get down on your knees and definitely, absolutely, not pray. 

It is not a verb. Neil is a person. Neil was a person. Never shook, never faltered, always on the verge of running but never did. Took being tied down in Riko's bed because he thought it would save Andrew.

Nathaniel doesn't remember any of that. Nathaniel wouldn't do any of that. Nathaniel is doing a performance of what he thinks Andrew wants. He doesn't know what Neil knew, which is that Andrew wants nothing.

Andrew drags his finger a half-inch lower to the collar of Nathaniel's shirt and tugs. “Yes or no?” Andrew asks.

Nathaniel doesn't hesitate. “Yes.”

He kisses the same. He kisses the same as Neil. Standing out here on the roof, no contact anywhere except their lips and that spot on Nathaniel's collar, Andrew could almost forget. It's not Nathaniel. It's Neil. They're making up for lost time, or maybe they never lost the time in the first place. 

But then Nathaniel separates from him. “I remember this. I remember you.”

“You're not him.”

“I just don't have all the right memories. I—” He looks away from Andrew, and the movement looks so much like the old Neil that Andrew almost reaches out to stop it. “—I'm trying to remember. I want to be him again.”

“Why? He got kidnapped and tortured.”

“Because.” Nathaniel has that expression Neil used to get when he was feeling particularly lost. Andrew remembers it, sharp as the blade of his own knife, from standing over Neil in Wymack's apartment, Neil weaving a tortured web of lies about his own past. Andrew believed him. He shouldn't still be this stupid. Nathaniel hugs himself with those arms, and even with all the physical differences, he looks like him. Just like Neil when he was terrified and devastated and trying to keep himself here. “Everyone just—dropped everything. For me. For Neil. No one's ever—I don't remember anything except for pain and killing, and out of nowhere these people tell me that I'm an exy player, that I'm on this team—that I was putting this team back together. And that I cared about them, and they cared about me. I mean, about Neil. They loved him.”

“And he left,” Andrew says. “And now we have you.”

“I'm him,” Nathaniel insists. “I can be.”

Andrew wants to kiss him again. He lights a cigarette instead.

“Go back inside,” he says. “I'm tempted to push you off the roof.”

“Do it. I'd drag you with me.”

Andrew smashes his cigarette against the ground. Nathaniel looks back at him, apparently having no fucking idea what provoked Andrew at all. That's the one thing that didn't die with Neil, then. How stupid and infuriating he is. That seems to be encoded into his DNA.

He lights another cigarette. Nathaniel keeps watching him for another minute, and then he listens to Andrew for once and goes inside.

This was ill-advised the first time, when Neil was Neil and had simple motivations and a simple mind and didn't care about anything except playing exy and surviving til the end of the year. Now, Andrew can't think of anything stupider he could've done.

*

A week later, they find themselves at a shopping mall. It isn't really an accident; Nicky needs a new coat, and Nathaniel needs a new phone. He doesn't know it yet—Andrew has gone for what worked last time: use Nicky as a diversion and buy the phone himself to avoid a public panic attack—but he is about to be trackable to everyone from the United States government to Andrew himself.

Nathaniel meets Andrew in the parking lot alone. Andrew was just enjoying the moment's peace: he got a giant McFlurry from the food court and, despite the chill in the air and being two stories of parking lot up, was taking great pleasure in alternating between bites of ice cream and drags of his cigarette. But, like his alter ego, Nathaniel isn't interested in giving Andrew a moment's peace.

“Kevin, Nicky, and Aaron are still shopping,” Nathaniel says. “Aaron said to meet you out here.”

He hops up on the ledge to sit down. Andrew hates him all over again, especially when Nathaniel steals the cigarette from between Andrew's fingers.

Well, all the more reason to see how triggered this version of him gets by phones. Andrew cedes the cigarette, sets down his McFlurry, and opens the white drawstring bag he's been half-heartedly guarding from potential muggers.

He already opened Nathaniel's phone, of course, set it up with contacts and a few select apps. He tosses it, and Nathaniel catches it by habit and then almost drops it two stories down.

“If you break it, you'll pay for the new one,” Andrew says. 

“What is this?” Nathaniel asks, pinching the phone between his index finger and his thumb like it might be toxic. He actually does drop the cigarette, which is a waste. Cigarettes are expensive. 

“A phone,” Andrew says. Maybe he can't do this again. He can't. He was high the last time, curious, skirting too close to the edge of his own comfort. Now he is just exhausted.

“I can't have this,” Nathaniel says. “I got rid of my last one. They'll find me. No matter where I go, or if I run—”

“Or I will.” Andrew opens his own phone, itself recently upgraded courtesy of the Kevin Day Fund for Underprivileged Monsters. Andrew swipes through two pages of apps until he gets to the ironically named—for him—Find My Friends. “Implanting a GPS device in your neck seemed impractical.”

Nathaniel opens his phone and scrolls to the same app. “I can find you too. Are you scared I'll get lost, or do you just think I'm going to be stupid enough to keep this on me if I leave?”

“Keep it on you if you leave,” Andrew says. “Or don't. See if I care.”

“That doesn't work on me,” Nathaniel says. Andrew hates the way Nathaniel looks at him. Like Andrew can be read, or like he is a puzzle to be solved. “I can tell when you're lying.”

Andrew doesn't lie. He stares back at Nathaniel, waiting for him to correct himself. 

“Okay, fine. It isn't a lie. It's just dishonest. If you didn't care, you wouldn't be doing any of this.”

“I don't care,” Andrew says. “About you.”

“Neil, though.” Nathaniel's pupils are little pinpricks of black in the sun. His eyes are pale blue. It's demonic, honestly. “You care about him.”

Andrew doesn't deny it. He remembers bruising Kevin's throat, scouring half of England one summer, going to Baltimore, tightening his holds on Kevin and Aaron, closing his mouth and keeping it closed.

“And he cared about you,” Nathaniel says. “And I do, too. Even if I don't want to.”

Andrew steps forward to bridge the gap between them. He curves a hand around the back of Nathaniel's neck.

“Talk less,” Andrew says, which Nathaniel takes as the invitation it is.

Kissing him is a relief. Andrew doesn't have to see that look on his face.

*

“Do we really have to call you Nathaniel?” Nicky asks.

They are warming up for practice. Andrew hasn't broken off to walk laps with the other goalies yet. Maybe Nicky should have saved this conversation for later.

“What do you mean?” Nathaniel asks. 

“I mean, there are so many nicknames, right? Even if it's not Neil. There's Nat, Nate, even Natty is an option—”

“Neil was not a nickname for Nathaniel,” Nathaniel says. “It was its own name. I just liked it.”

“You remember that?” 

“I remember a lot. More and more lately.”

Andrew doesn't want to listen to this. Robin is still stretching, but Andrew starts in Renee's direction to start their laps anyway.

Nathaniel stares after him. Andrew ignores him, which is, of course, to his detriment: Nathaniel catches up with him and takes him almost by surprise. 

“Why did you leave? Nicky is great, but I know who I want to talk to.”

“Your identity crisis is much more interesting than our warm ups, but I do have to warm up,” Andrew says, dropping into a stretch. When he looks up, Nathaniel looks away, almost guiltily. That strikes Andrew as almost funny: it's not like he hasn't been watching Nathaniel this whole time, after all. “Careful. People will notice.”

“Why don't you want them to know?”

Andrew blinks, a little surprised. “They do know. They found out about Neil.”

“But not about me.”

“Do you want them to know?”

“Do you?” Nathaniel asks.

That strikes Andrew as almost funny, too. “I want nothing, Nathaniel. Don't forget that.”

Renee waves at Andrew. He isn't one for excuses, but he finds himself grateful for this one anyway. He doesn't look back at Nathaniel, but he doesn't hear Nathaniel's footsteps behind him, either, which is for the best. He remembers Neil walking with him and Renee sometimes, rarely participating in their conversations but always listening in. That was Neil. Observant and always listening, always watching, even when Andrew was purposely opaque. Andrew doesn't know how Neil did it. Nathaniel is doing it, too, damn him, and remembering. And the more he remembers, the harder it is for Andrew to remember that Nathaniel isn't really the same person. If it looks like a Neil and quacks like a Neil and kisses Andrew like a Neil—

“You two look cozy,” Renee says. “Have you made up yet?”

“We were never fighting,” Andrew says. “He just disappeared.”

“And you've forgiven him for that?”

Andrew doesn't deign to respond.

*

Andrew is the first person in the showers after practice and the last one to finish up. His muscles are sore. Despite staying in shape during his exy hiatus, putting so much time between himself and an exy goal means his body strains to keep up. He's getting used to it again, the constant dull ache of exertion. He kind of likes it, not that he would ever admit that to Kevin, who would take it completely the wrong way.

“Everyone else is in the car already,” Nathaniel says when Andrew walks up to the lockers to put his exy things away. “They said to tell you it's rude to take hour long showers when everyone else wants to go to bed.”

“Then they can walk,” Andrew says, taking his time pulling his sneakers on. “You waited behind to tell me that?”

“They talk a lot,” Nathaniel says. “My head hurts.” 

It isn't shocking to hear: Nathaniel looks strung out for some reason, more tired than he has appeared since arriving here, huddled on a bench with his arms around his knees. Maybe it's a consequence of having his brain wrung out like a towel. In fact, it should be surprising that Nathaniel doesn't have constant headaches.

Andrew prods Nathaniel between the shoulders to get him to stand up. Eventually, he does. 

It isn't until they drop Aaron, Nicky, and Kevin off at Fox Tower that Andrew says, “Explain.”

“Explain what?”

Andrew looks back at him, waiting. When Neil had these little I-am-falling-apart moments, he always just came clean about them. Nathaniel requires more finesse, Andrew supposes. He certainly isn't less desperate for affection and intimacy than Neil was. 

And yet, Andrew doesn't doubt Nathaniel will spill. He doesn't even expect Nathaniel to lie.

“I don't know,” Nathaniel says finally. “I keep thinking I'm going to wake up one day and this is going to be a dream, or I'll just be—wiped clean again. I don't want to be that person anymore. I don't want to be someone else's tool.”

Andrew rolls down the window and lights a cigarette. “You told me something else before you disappeared. You told me your middle name. You said it was a secret.”

Nathaniel blinks. “Did I? What was it?”

“Abram,” Andrew says. He hangs his cigarette hand out the window, an easy excuse to look away from Nathaniel if he has to. “It was the truth. Not much else you said was.” 

“Neil Abram Josten,” Nathaniel says, so soft it might be to himself. “That was my name.”

Andrew reaches forward, curves his fingers around Nathaniel's chin so Nathaniel has to look at him. “It is a reminder,” Andrew says. “Of who you really are.”

“This is who I really am. There's nothing else.”

That's the problem. The line has blurred, even for Andrew. He flicks his half-smoked cigarette away and leans in. 

“I know.” 

“Can I really be Neil again?”

“Leave Nathaniel buried in Baltimore,” Andrew says. He brushes his lips against Neil's throat. “I only want Neil.”

*

Neil scores four times in their game the next Friday. He answers to Josten when their team calls it out. He celebrates with all of them. He goes to a party Dan throws, and he takes Andrew's lot with him.

They almost don't all fit in the room. Neil's freshman year, there were nine of them. Now there are fifteen. Half the team is about to graduate, but Neil picked up the reins like he didn't spend two years away. The freshmen already listen to him. Dan and Wymack want to make him the next captain. Andrew can tell. They haven't said anything yet—what are they supposed to do with a captain who can't travel?—but Andrew can tell. Everyone wants Neil to be the same person he was before he disappeared.

He isn't the same, Andrew thinks, sipping from the giant glass of whisky he poured. It's Johnnie Walker Black, a reward-slash-trade-slash-apology from Wymack that Andrew brought to the party out of the goodness of his heart.

No one else is really interested in Scotch, anyway. They're all mixing flavored vodka with Sprite, except for Kevin, who is drinking the vodka straight. Only Neil is leaning against the back wall, talking to a freshman, drinking the same amber liquid as Andrew.

He isn't the same. He's more social than Neil was, which is strange, and he is definitely more openly interested in Andrew. He's bigger, more lethal, which shouldn't be attractive but somehow is. 

Neil catches him looking. He half-smiles when they make eye contact. It's close enough to a call that Andrew starts toward him, openness and obviousness be damned.

*

But Andrew never gets what he wants. That was what made him stop wanting things in the first place. No rich long-lost uncle was going to show up and sweep him out of foster care; there was no conspiracy about his birth; he was not a fairy changeling, or a famous wizard, or a merman whose tail would only appear when he stepped into water after his sixteenth birthday. He had no secret magic Irish luck, no special skills, no way out.

Bitter disappointment gets old at roughly the same rate an abuse victim does. Andrew stopped wanting things right after he found out Aaron existed. A twin! A living mother who couldn't bear the guilt of having given him up! It wasn't magic, and it wasn't unthinkable wealth, but it was something. A last name. A family. An escape.

But then his foster brother took that away too. And that was the last thing Andrew wanted before Neil.

So it makes sense that this would be stripped from too. Not just once, in Binghamton, but here too, in the place Andrew has finally come to think of as home.

They're at court. It's late. Kevin is running drills with Neil; Andrew is standing in goal because watching them was even more boring than humoring them. 

“Hold on,” Neil says. “Someone's calling me.”

“You kept your phone on you?” Kevin asks. “Do you always have your phone on you? How has it not broken yet?”

Andrew has another question: who would be calling Neil who isn't in this room right now or else asleep in bed? 

Neil looks startled. Then his expression shifts. “Ready,” he says.

Andrew doesn't recognize the look on Neil's face until Neil is right up in front of him, racquet held at waist level with both hands. Something's happened. Something's changed.

Neil swings the racquet, aiming for the least protected spot on Andrew's body right where his chest armor meets his shorts. Andrew doesn't think, just reacts, parrying Neil's racquet with his own. Neil swings again; Andrew parries; Neil swings. Andrew casts a quick look around and finds Kevin staring at them uselessly. Jesus. 

Andrew puts his racquet up against Neil's and pushes until Neil stumbles backwards. It works to throw Neil off balance, but then Neil is back, relentless, stronger than he used to be and fucking fast. He shoves Andrew and his racquet until Andrew is pinned to the wall and his racquet is on the floor, just as useless as Kevin.

“Neil,” Kevin says. “Stop it.”

Neil doesn't say anything. His expression is completely blank. His phone, abandoned on the floor a few feet away, is still mid-call.

Kevin takes a step forward, holding his own racquet like a shield in front of his body. Absently, a step removed from the situation, Andrew wonders if Kevin would ever actually swing it. He doesn't think Kevin is that kind of brave, but Kevin has proved him wrong before. “Neil.”

Neil presses his racquet against Andrew's throat, right between the collar of his jersey and his helmet strap. “Sorry,” Neil says. “I need to get Kevin back to West Virginia, and you're the only eyewitness.”

“Don't,” Andrew chokes out.

“I'm just following orders.”

“Whose?”

Neil's expression doesn't change. Andrew has the absurd idea that this must be what it's like talking to him. “It doesn't matter.”

“Who are you?”

Neil blinks. “It doesn't matter.”

“Neil Abram Josten,” Andrew whispers. “That's who you are. You know that.”

It's like a reset button. Neil springs back, dropping the racquet and tripping backwards until he falls against Kevin. 

Andrew takes a second to assess damage. He's going to end up with a bruise on his throat, and his wrist aches where it collided with Neil's racquet, but he thinks it'll be fine in a day or so. 

“I didn't—” Neil says, staring down at his hands. “I don't know what I'm doing, I—I don't know what happened. I answered the phone and then I just—reacted, I—”

“Neil,” Kevin says, hands on Neil's shoulders like he'd have any chance of holding Neil back if he had to. “It wasn't your fault.”

“No,” Andrew says, picking his racquet back up. Kevin could've told him about the Butcher of Baltimore, about Neil's real connection to the Moriyamas, at any point Neil's freshman year. If Andrew had known about that little wrench in the Riko's plans, he could've worked around it. Kept a closer watch on Neil. Been aware of a group with completely different interests and needs than the Son of Exy. “It's your fault.” 

He walks off the court, more because he can't keep looking at Neil than because he's pissed at Kevin. He wants a cigarette; he maybe wants a drink. He misses his pills, the hysterical unfeeling of them, like he could wade through broken glass and come out smiling.

Of course, Neil follows him out. Kevin chases after them, like he has a chance of coming between dead-eyed assassin Neil and dead-eyed mother-killer Andrew. Andrew ignores both of them, pushes into one of the stalls to shower.

Neil follows him in. Andrew freezes with his back against the stall wall, waiting for whatever's coming. He has knives on him. More than he used to, fewer than when Neil first got back. 

“Wait,” Neil says. “I'm sorry. I—” 

Andrew fists a handful of Neil's hair and tugs, exposing the line of his throat. He flashes a knife in his other hand. “So we're clear,” he says, bringing the knife up and pushing just enough at the delicate skin on Neil's neck to make him bleed, “I could kill you.” He's no Russian-trained assassin, but he has the reflexes of a born goalie and the burnt up insides of someone who hasn't trusted another person since he was twelve years old. He stows the knife and curls his hand in the front of Neil's shirt. “Don't touch me.”

Neil never has to be told twice. He brackets his arms on either side of Andrew's head, lets himself be dragged forward, kisses his Neil Josten earnest messy kisses. He tastes like sweat; it could almost be a post-game kiss. The inside of Andrew's head is a disaster. He wishes he could get Neil closer, wishes he could get Neil back, wishes he could've read Neil's face and kept hold of the back of his shirt after the game at Binghamton. He bites Neil's lip to distract himself, enjoys the sound Neil makes in response, lets his eyes shutter when Neil slides his lips over Andrew's jaw, bites back a groan when Neil reaches his throat. Neil presses a kiss to the spot he bruised, and Andrew wants him too badly.

“Your neck fetish,” Andrew grinds out, “is not attractive.”

“You like it. I like that you like it.”

Andrew wants—

A thousand things. His control has frayed so thoroughly since Neil disappeared that he almost drops to his knees right then. He feels like the way reinforced glass shatters into millions of pieces.

He says, “Stop.” 

Neil stops just like he did earlier at the sound of his name. The razor-thin cut on his throat is dark red, trickling blood. He studies Andrew's face, arms still on either side of Andrew's head. It's possessive. Another unattractive trait.

“I have to shower,” Andrew says.

“Do you want—”

“Just go.”

Neil goes.

Andrew is out of the shower and dressed before either Neil or Kevin, so he escapes the locker room to wait for them in the car. He doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. He's always been this stupid, this needlessly self-destructive. It's just that Neil used to make Andrew want to believe it wasn't self-destructive to want him, and now it's the opposite. Having Neil's racquet up against his throat should not have been hot. 

Kevin and Neil get to the car in step with each other. Kevin slides into the passenger seat, and Neil is silent in the back the whole way back to Fox Tower.

“We need to tell Coach about what happened tonight,” Neil says when they get out of the car. “If I'm not in control, I'm putting the whole team at risk.”

Kevin opens his mouth, no doubt to protest. Neil is on the cusp of being named captain. Kevin won't want to risk him getting kicked off the team.

But he takes one look at Andrew and shuts up. Andrew ignores both of them and goes up to the roof.

Neil doesn't follow him. He might be downstairs killing Kevin. He might just be asleep. Andrew can't make himself care about either just now. He sits down up against the ledge. He can't take hanging off it just now.

He sucks down three cigarettes in a row before stopping to take account of himself. He still has all his limbs. His neck doesn't really hurt; Neil obviously wasn't pressing that hard if Andrew could still talk. The bruise will be purple tomorrow, but for now it's just a tender spot on his throat. His hands do not shake. His arms are sore, but that's from the exy.

The door opens and closes. Neil followed him up here after all. He drops down a few inches away from Andrew, looks around at Andrew, and says, “How did this start?”

“There is no this,” Andrew says, automatic.

“You know what I mean. How did we go from our deal to kissing on the roof?”

Andrew doesn't even know. He remembers giving in to something he wanted just once, and then it spiraled completely out of his control. He remembers pushing Neil up against a wall to jerk him off, clinical except for the way Neil looked at him after, the way Andrew needed Neil out of his sight to come without triggering himself. 

“You said you were tired of being nothing,” Andrew says, because Andrew doesn't lie. “I said I hated you. You didn't believe me.”

Somehow, Neil smiles. “Of course.”

“You were wrong,” Andrew tells him, scooting closer. “I hated you then. I hate you now. Ninety-five percent of the time I want to flay the skin from your body.”

“What about the other five?”

Andrew wraps his hand around the back of Neil's neck to draw him in, stops when only a hair's breadth separates their lips. 

He says, “Yes or no?”

“It's always yes with you.”

“Don't say stupid things.”

“I mean it. If you have to ask, I'll keep answering. But the answer won't change.”

Until you leave, Andrew thinks. Until you leave again. 

“Andrew,” Neil whispers. 

Andrew wants to say, I thought you were dead. I thought you ran. I thought you left your phone and your keys and disappeared on purpose. 

This is a bad idea. No, this is a terrible idea. Andrew doesn't even care. He draws Neil the rest of the way in.

Beneath Andrew's fingers, Neil's pulse races, or maybe Andrew is just feeling his own pulse. Neil tastes like toothpaste. It's strange how, all these months later, so much about him didn't change. The same toothpaste brand, the same inexplicable preference for the smell of cigarettes to the taste, the same reaction from Andrew at Neil's touch. It feels like they picked up where they left off. It feels like they restarted two years in with all the history there for context. 

Andrew curls his other hand around Neil's arm. The difference in musculature is grounding, a reminder that this isn't the same person who disappeared in upstate New York. New Neil is bigger than old Neil.

He pulls back for just long enough to say, “You can touch my hair.” 

Neil takes the allowance immediately, tangling his fingers in hair that has grown out too long, tugging at Andrew's head to expose his throat. He kisses the tender spot again, and this time Andrew lets himself respond—after all, who is going to hear them up here?

“Andrew,” Neil says, low.

“I want—” Andrew says, cutting himself off. He drags a finger over Neil's lip, reminding himself who he is and where he is and who is next to him. 

He doesn't want. He never wants. He trained himself out of wanting years ago.

He drops his hand to Neil's pants, undoes the drawstrings, brushes a hand over Neil's erection. He enjoys the sound of Neil gasping his name again. 

“I'm going to blow you,” Andrew hears himself say. He has no idea when he made that decision. It's not going to be comfortable up here; it's not like there's a cushion he can put under his knees. “Yes or no?”

“Are—” Neil says, and Andrew almost thinks Neil is going to ask, _Are you sure?_

Thankfully, though, he doesn't. He just nods, delivers a breathy, “Yes,” and keeps his hands to himself.

Andrew was right. It isn't uncomfortable. He doesn't care. He gets Neil's dick out, takes a moment to steady himself, and then takes the whole length into his mouth.

Neil's hand drops back to Andrew's hair. Andrew doesn't let himself look up at Neil; he focuses on the task at hand, on the feeling of his knees against the cement, the strain of his neck in this position. He ignores the alarm bells going off in his head. The only thing he wants is that feeling, Neil's fingers curling at the nape of his neck, Neil groaning, Neil saying, Andrew, Andrew.

He comes quickly. Andrew swallows, looks up, and takes in the sight of him, wrecked, head lolling back, mouth open, line of his throat exposed again. Andrew sees the cut he left; Neil cleaned it, and it's just a thin red line now. 

“Do you want—” Neil says.

Andrew can't articulate what he wants. He wants to let his head rest in Neil's lap. He wants to drag Neil down on top of him and grind against his leg until he comes. He hates both urges, doesn't know what to do with them. He's never wanted to be touched like that before, fingers carding through his hair, running over his face, brushing over his lips.

This is a disaster. He needs to stop. Bee would tell him to stop if he still let her tell him what to do.

He says, “Only my hair.” It's a reminder Neil doesn't need.

Andrew sits up, climbs over Neil's lap, kisses Neil to distract himself from his own dick. He jerks himself off quickly, made quicker by Neil's fingers tangling in his hair. He comes on Neil's t-shirt with Neil's name bitten back. It gives him the tiniest inkling of pleasure to ruin the shirt.

Neil doesn't want to let go. That much is evident. It doesn't matter. Andrew disentangles himself, stands up, touches his own lips because some absurd impulse made him wonder if they were even still there.

“Andrew,” Neil says, clearer this time. “Are you—”

“Get out of my sight.”

“Andrew—”

“I don't want to see you.”

Neil goes. Andrew presses his hands against the ledge. Reinforced glass after too concentrated an impact. He is going to leave pieces of himself everywhere.

*

Kevin doesn't want to tell Wymack about Neil's episode. Andrew barely notices, even when he witnesses the argument's rehashing every night on their way to practice. Kevin might threaten to stop working with Neil. Neil might call Kevin a selfish cripple. Andrew doesn't pay attention.

*

In the end, Neil wins the argument. Unsurprisingly, Wymack does not take the news of Neil's mini-relapse well.

“Tell me again why the fuck we shouldn't go to the cops,” he says.

“If you think you can trust them, go to them,” Kevin says. “You already have extra security at Fox Tower and at the Foxhole Court. I don't know what more you could ask for.”

“Are you serious?” Wymack says. “His goal was _you_ , and you don't think we should bring in some experts?”

“Experts will only take him away,” Kevin says, because he's committed to winning at exy and very good at appealing to people's pathos. Wymack only has one soft spot, and it's shaped like the fifteen of them.

“I can't risk every single Fox for one person.”

“It is not one person,” Kevin says. “It's Neil.”

Neil looks back and forth from one to the other the entire conversation. Finally, he steps in.

“I'll do whatever you think I need to do,” he says. “I'll let Andrew answer my phone every time it rings. I'll see Dobson every day. I'll go to more sophisticated psychologists. I just want to play.”

Wymack sighs. “What did Andrew say to get you to stop?”

“His name,” Andrew replies. “Neil Abram Josten.”

“Everyone on the team needs to know,” Wymack says. “And you'd better get it tattooed on your fucking forehead or something so you can look in a mirror and remember who the fuck you are.”

“I've had face tattoos before,” Neil says. “It didn't really work out for me.”

“Find a solution. I don't care what it is. If it happens again, Neil—” Wymack hesitates. “You know I can't risk everyone's life.”

Neil stares back at him. Andrew finds that he can't look at Neil for very long, not with that expression on Neil's face, that resigned disappointment.

“I know,” Neil says. “If it happens again, I'm gone.”

“To the cops,” Wymack says. “Not back to them.”

“It's the same thing, Coach.”

Wymack's expression mirrors Neil's. “I know.”

*

Andrew has nightmares every night for the next two weeks. Every time he closes his eyes he sees something different. Sometimes it's Riko's dick in his mouth. Sometimes it's Drake's or Proust's. Sometimes it's others, trauma he thought he'd already worked through. He always tries to bite down, but he's always frozen in place. On especially bad nights, the situation is reversed: instead of Andrew being raped it's Neil, and he always looks up, fixes Andrew with that wild-eyed gaze he gets when he's really frightened, except Andrew is frozen in place again.

In the end, it's Aaron who notices. He stands in front of Andrew when Andrew is smoking out their window and waits for Andrew to say something. When Andrew doesn't, Aaron says, “Hey. I know you don't want to hear this, but you need to see Dobson.”

Andrew stares back at him, cool.

“Andrew. I mean it. Neil coming back was supposed to make you better, not worse.” Aaron's jaw works; Andrew wonders absently if tooth grinding is hereditary. “I would never have—you just have to go see her.”

Andrew flicks the remains of his cigarette at Aaron, singeing the front of his shirt. Aaron's irritation is clear on his face. That feels more familiar. 

But he goes to see her anyway. If Andrew is doing so badly that Aaron actually worked up the balls to talk to him, then he must be doing pretty badly. 

Bee's office looks exactly the same as the last time Andrew was here. It shouldn't be a surprise; he came for his eval in September, and that was only a few months ago.

She hands him a steaming mug of cocoa and sits down behind her desk. Andrew takes his usual seat opposite her.

“It's good to see you, Andrew,” Bee says. “How have you been?”

He hasn't said a word in her office in months. Their last few sessions before he stopped coming were silent. She tried. Andrew didn't. What did it matter, he thought, if every time he got better, every time he started to unwind himself enough to care about something, he failed? What did it matter if he stayed just as self-destructive as he's always been, except instead of actually cutting his own body he got himself into situations where he needed something so desperately that if it were to be taken from him he'd all but bleed out? What did it matter, if he was always going to be like this?

There is no cure for what he has. There is medication, and he's been down that route, and he is loath to try it again. Not right now, not in the middle of an exy season when Neil has just come back. 

“Physically fine,” Andrew says. 

Bee's eyebrows quirk up. “You've started talking again?”

“Evidently.”

Bee smiles. “Why do you specify that you are physically fine?”

For once, Andrew doesn't know what to say. Somehow, _Neil is back, and I can't sleep, and it's my fault, because I moved too quickly even though I knew it wouldn't be good for me, and now the only thing I can think about is what if he disappears on me again, and when I try to sleep my brain swaps him out for one of my rapists, or sometimes, when it's feeling vindictive, swaps_ me _out for one of my rapists_ feels too honest. 

But Andrew has never shied away from brutal honesty. 

He starts with, “Neil is back.”

They talk for longer than they're supposed to. He leaves two hours later, feeling no less disastrous but at least slightly more in order. 

His assignment for the week is to establish boundaries with Neil. It sounds stupid, even to him: Neil is so far from the problem, and yet he is undeniably its source. But Neil would never do anything Andrew didn't explicitly want him to.

“Just kissing,” he tells Neil the next time he sees him. “For now.”

Neil has his fingers pressed to his mouth. “Did I do something?”

Andrew has to look away. He lights a cigarette. “Don't ask stupid questions.”

“It's not stupid. If I did something, I need to know so I don't do it again.”

Sharp in the back of Andrew's throat is the urge to scream. He doesn't even know what he would say. Neil's only crime is saying yes, over and over, every time Andrew asked, until Andrew was neck deep in this and desperate—and then disappearing. And that last part isn't even Neil's fault.

“You did not.”

“Okay,” Neil says. He swipes the cigarette from between Andrew's fingers, takes a long drag. Andrew watches the way his cheeks sink in, the stretch of his burns over his cheekbones. He is standing, Andrew notices, well within Andrew's personal space. He is still the only person comfortable getting within arm's length. “Can I take you up on that right now?”

Andrew wants to say yes, and it surprises him that he wants it. But he's trying, for the first time since Neil disappeared, to get better. 

He says, “No.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Andrew twists his fingers in Neil's sleeve. “No.”

Neil exhales white smoke. “Okay.”

*

Andrew gets back from class one day—a struggle in itself, going to class and doing homework with all of this going on—and stumbles upon the strangest thing he has seen since Neil's return.

Neil and Aaron are sharing a pizza on the floor. They are talking. A movie plays in the background. 

Aaron glances up when he realizes Andrew is the one who just walked in, and his body language completely changes. He goes stiff, his jaw clenching, and shoves his paper plate away.

Neil turns to see what garnered this response, and his body language changes, too, opens right up. Sometimes Andrew can't bear to look him in the eye. He forces himself to do it now.

“How was class?” Neil asks. 

It's such a normal, earnest question. Strange to hear it from the cold-blooded assassin who has rebooted Andrew's limbic system.

Instead of going to the bedroom, Andrew steals a slice of pizza and plops down on the couch. He wants to hear the conversation. He can't imagine Aaron and Neil having a conversation about anything other than exy.

After a few minutes, though, Aaron gets up, dusts himself off, mumbles something about giving Nicky a slice, and disappears from the room. It's an obvious lie. Andrew wonders why Aaron still thinks Andrew doesn't know about the cheerleader; he is so blatant about it. Maybe Aaron thinks Andrew is stupid.

“Aaron says before I left he and I didn't really get along,” Neil tells Andrew, sitting down on the couch next to him. “But I think I like him now.”

Neil says he doesn't have a physical type, and Andrew believes him. He can't think of another reason for this change of heart. “Why?”

“I think we have a common interest.”

“Aaron only plays exy for the scholarship money.”

“I do have some other interests, you know,” Neil says. If Andrew didn't know any better, he would think Neil were flirting. 

“I did not ask for your concern.”

Neil holds a scarred hand out. “I know. You would never.”

It isn't sentiment, Andrew thinks, that has him winding his fingers through Neil's. It's the desire to clench hard enough to keep him here.

Andrew rests his head against the couch. Neil does too, and they sit like that until the movie ends and Nicky bangs on the door to be let in.

*

It goes okay after that.

Rebuilding is slow, but it goes okay. 

Neil remembers most things. Sometimes he needs reminding. Sometimes he stares back at Andrew, blank-faced, when confronted with something that has been fully stripped from his mind.

But it goes okay. Bee seems to think he's okay—at least, that's what Neil says when he gets into Andrew's car after his sessions with her. Andrew can only assume that this version of Neil actually talks to her. The old version was not particularly committed to any concept of recovery.

It means that, at some point in late March, the Foxes readdress the one thing the new Neil has not been able to do for them.

“We're better at home, and it's not just because of home team advantage,” Dan says. “We need more attacking power.”

“If Kevin fucking trusted me for five fucking minutes—” Jack says, but Dan shakes her head.

“We can't blame this on Kevin. It's hard having to learn how to play around two different sets of starting strikers. Neil, how does Betsy think you're progressing?”

Neil looks like he might sprint at any minute. Andrew wonders how much he remembers about the day he was kidnapped. He remembered the game, at least, almost immediately after he got here. 

“I don't know,” he says. “Okay.”

“Do you think she'd clear you for travel? We need you in attack, and we need Andrew in goal. If we want to finish this off right.” Her eyes have that I-want-to-win glint they used to take on before Neil disappeared. “We have a chance of making it to semifinals. I don't think we should let your kidnappers take that away from us, do you?”

“Dan—” Matt says, but Dan doesn't take her eyes off Neil.

Neil says, “You think we could win?”

“Don't you?”

Neil's smile is slow and cold. Despite his best efforts, Andrew has never met Nathan Wesninski, but he has seen a lot of pictures. This is the most Neil has ever looked like him. “Yeah. I think we could.”

“So we'll talk to Betsy,” Dan says. “Coach already said it's up to her.”

“Hold on,” Aaron interrupts. “He almost killed Andrew and Kevin last month.”

“I mean, I don't hear them complaining, and I think the fact that they're both still alive and well means he has it under control. Right, Neil?”

“I don't know if I can just carve what they did to me out of my head,” Neil says. “But what's the point in me coming back if I'm just stuck here all the time?”

“He has it under control,” Kevin says. “I would know.”

“Neil Abram Josten,” Dan says. “Those are the magic words, right?”

It was a secret when Neil told Andrew his middle name the first time around. Andrew tugs at one of Neil's fingers under the table. Nodding, Neil lets him.

*

Neil passes whatever tests Bee has him take. The entire team knows how to knock him out of it. Everything is going according to plan.

Andrew can't get the anxious queasiness out of his stomach anyway. He can't be sure it isn't just the flight to Richmond that has him feeling like this, even more on edge than usual. He thinks if anyone were to touch him he'd probably stab them with one of the pens he has stashed in his wristbands instead of knives. 

Everything is fine all through the game. They play well—with Andrew's participation, UVA don't manage to score at all in the second half—and officially make college semifinals. They haven't come this close since Neil's freshman year. Everyone is buzzing about it. 

They shower. They change. Everything is fine. Everything seems fine.

Neil comes out of a changing stall only a little late. He has the strangest expression on his face. At first Andrew thinks maybe this is the Nathaniel the assassin, but then Neil attempts a smile, and Andrew remembers.

It's the same look. His eyes always give him away, if you know him. Which Andrew does.

“I,” Neil says, and then he clears his throat and says it again, “I think we played really well today.”

“Do you, vice cap?” Dan asks. She has no idea. She is smiling. “Let's get out of here.”

Neil drops behind all of them. Just like last time. The security guards are anonymous. Just like last time.

“There's a big crowd outside,” one of them says, a woman with a smile that reminds Andrew of looking in the mirror three years ago. “We'll have to make sure no one disappears.”

Andrew could stab her right now. It's only Neil's fingers tangled in his sleeve that stop him.

They step outside. This time, Andrew knows the mob is going to attack when it does. This time, Andrew keeps his eyes locked on Neil, takes off after him from Neil makes a run for it. He gets an elbow to the eye for his efforts, and he's so dizzy he doesn't know which way is up, but he stumbles after Neil anyway.

Andrew keeps running until the crowd has dispersed. He doesn't see where Neil went. He doesn't see the guards, either.

Kevin catches up a moment later, then Aaron.

“Where is he?” Aaron asks.

Andrew's instinct is to shove his knife between Aaron's ribs. He forces himself to breathe through it. Aaron has not done anything. He hasn't done anything.

“Gone,” Kevin says. “He's gone.”

*

They search the parking lot, but no one left a bag or keys or a phone. Not this time.

That's the good news.

The bad news is that Neil is already forty miles away according to his phone's GPS. Forty miles away and getting farther. 

“We can't follow him without the cops involved,” Dan says. “He's an _assassin_. If they don't kill us, he will.”

“You're going to trust a bunch of Virginia cops to care about some kidnapped brown kid?” Allison says. “We need something better.”

“The FBI,” Renee says.

“We're not calling the feds on Neil,” Matt says.

“If we call the FBI, the Moriyamas will kill us all,” Kevin says.

“Why?” Wymack asks. “What do they have to hide, and would the FBI trade it for Neil?”

“Can you fucking grow a pair, seriously, Kevin, you're the one who pressured him into coming here and told him how great it'd be to travel and—”

The attack comes, surprisingly, from Aaron. When they get Neil back, Andrew full intends to figure out how exactly they stopped hating each other. 

Kevin is quiet for a long moment. He glances at Andrew, who raises a knife, an idle threat, and then says, “They have a lot to hide. The FBI probably wants to know it, too.”

“Good,” Allison says. “I know a lawyer.”

*

It takes them forever to get a rental. Andrew would've stolen one, but Wymack was hovering over his shoulder, and Andrew's line is probably somewhere around “stabbing Wymack to get past him so I can steal a car.”

“I don't like this,” Wymack says, hovering by the car. “We should wait for the FBI.”

“Stay with your team,” Andrew says, sitting down in the driver's seat. “I am one person. They are fourteen. You have my location. Find me.”

“Find us,” Aaron says, opening the passenger door and climbing in. “I'm coming with you.”

“You are not,” Andrew says.

“What happened to our deal?” Aaron asks. “No relationships. We stick together.”

“No relationships?” Andrew repeats. “Do you think I'm stupid?”

“Yeah,” Aaron says. “Otherwise you'd be happy to have some backup. You're not the only murderer on this team.”

“Get back on the bus,” Andrew says.

“You're going to have to force me out,” Aaron says. “Do you think I'm scared of you?”

“Yes.”

Aaron glares ahead stubbornly. “You need backup.”

“I am someone else's backup,” Andrew says. “Get out.”

“I knew it. You said no relationships, but you only meant me.”

“That was for your benefit, not mine.”

“If you get shot—”

“They will not shoot me,” Andrew says.

“You're not invincible, Andrew,” Aaron snaps. “Just because you keep getting lucky—”

Andrew turns on him, noting the way it makes Aaron back away. Just a little, but he still does it. “Call me lucky one more time.”

“You've been in two car wrecks since I met you. You spent a month in rehab. How long are you going to keep doing this?”

“Get out of the car,” Andrew says.

“I killed someone for you,” Aaron says. “Do you really think I wouldn't do that again?”

Andrew doesn't want to talk about this. He doesn't want to have this conversation ever, and he certainly does not want to have it fifty miles away from where Neil might be getting fucking tortured. “I did not ask you to.”

“I'm coming with you,” Aaron says. “Besides, you're not going to win a fight against an assassin when all you have is a knife.”

Andrew glances toward the bus. Wymack is on the phone, presumably with the FBI. He should wait. They should all stay here, Andrew and Aaron included. That is the rational thing to do. “And you brought an exy racquet?”

“It's better than nothing.”

Fine. If Aaron wants to die, well, Andrew can't stop him. 

He drives.

*

They are greeted within fifteen feet of Neil by an armored car.

“Fuck,” Aaron says, which is roughly the reaction Andrew has when people start getting out of the car. These aren't feds. They're mafia goons, and they are equipped with much better weaponry than Andrew and Aaron.

“Get out of the car,” one of them says. “Hands where we can see them. If you go for a weapon, we'll shoot.”

Andrew lifts his hands. 

They loitered too long, spent too much making a decision and arguing and renting cars, put too much faith in the FBI. They're fucked.

Andrew feels the cold press of metal against the back of his neck. 

“Move,” the person behind him says, and he does.

*

They get taken to a basement. Somehow all mobsters are the same: tacky house, bare basement fit for nothing but torture.

There are three people in the room other than Andrew and Aaron. There is the woman with the manic smile from before, a man who looks a bit like her, and someone lying on a cot under a sheet behind her. Andrew swallows down the panic blurring the edges of his vision. If that's Neil— 

“Ooh, twins!” the woman says. “We're going to have fun with you.”

Both the standing figures have guns pointed at Andrew and Aaron. Neither of them can move without risking one or both of them getting shot. But if Andrew's hands weren't restrained, he would go for his knives now, consequences be damned. He has no intention of letting her or anyone else put their hands on Aaron. 

He is saved the necessity of breaking his thumbs to get them out of the zipties by the other person's interference. “There's no time, Lola. We need Nathaniel in Baltimore yesterday.”

Lola pouts. “Well, we can at least make it fun to watch, right?” She pulls the sheet off the cot to reveal Neil after all, asleep and connected to some kind of machine. “Hey. Wake up.”

When he doesn't, Lola slaps him across the face. It's enough: his eyes open, cold and empty. 

“Ready,” he says.

Lola points at Aaron and Andrew. “Deal with the two of them, Junior.”

Neil sits up and pats himself down. He is still wearing the sweats he changed into after practice. Lola hands him a gun and a set of knives, which seems strange until Andrew remembers his father's nickname. 

He lifts the gun like he has done it a thousand times before. Like this is completely natural. 

He aims for Aaron.

“Hang on,” Lola says. “I want you to give us a show. Make it personal.”

“What did they do?” Neil asks, and winces when Lola presses down on something on the machine. 

“No questions,” she says. “Get to it.”

“Start with Andrew,” Lola says. “His twin killed for him once. It'll be fun to see him realize it didn't even matter.”

“No,” Aaron says. “No, Neil—Neil Abram Josten, don't do it, Neil Abram Josten—Neil, this isn't you—”

Neil pays no attention to this. He chooses a knife and steps right up to Andrew.

“We know all about your little nicknames,” Lola says. “Junior was kind enough to share them with us. He's so talkative now. And more obedient than ever. He was never like that as a child.”

As a child. Maybe it's a good thing Neil has had his memory wiped.

Neil presses the tip of his knife against Andrew's throat.

“Slow down,” Lola says. “Start lower. Remember when I taught you how to butcher a cow? No, I guess you wouldn't, huh?”

“It's muscle memory,” Neil says, lifting Andrew's shirt and bringing the knife to Andrew's side.

“Neil,” Andrew says. If Neil kills him, no one will be left for Aaron. Or Neil, for that matter. “Neil, no.”

Neil's eyes flick up to meet Andrew's. 

“You won't kill me,” Andrew says.

Neil stares back at him, expressionless. 

“You won't,” Andrew repeats.

“Why wouldn't I?”

“You know why.”

“If I knew, why would I ask?”

“Get on with it, Junior,” Lola says. She sounds like someone who is dangerous when she is impatient. “We don't have all day. Don't fuck this up like you did last time.”

Andrew says, “It is not my fault you are too stupid to string two thoughts together.”

Neil's knife skims Andrew's ribcage, settles between two ribs. There is the tiniest pinprick of pain. “Probably not the right tack to take with someone about to kill you.”

Andrew whispers, “You are not going to kill me.”

“I take it back,” Lola says. Both she and the man have ditched their super serious hitman stances and decided to watch this instead, apparently trusting that Neil will get the job done this time. “This is fun. Make him bleed, Junior.”

“He is bleeding,” Neil says. He steps away momentarily, demonstrates the little cut he made on Andrew's skin. 

“Keep going,” the unnamed man urges. “Don't you want your father to be proud?”

Neil glides the knife back up. It burns, but not as much as it should. These feel more like scratches than real cuts. Andrew certainly does not feel like a butchered cow. He feels dizzy from anxiety, can hear echoing sirens going off in his head, but this is far from the worst pain he has had inflicted on his body. He has had worse. He has done worse, actually, to himself.

“That's right,” Lola says. “Make it sexy. I've heard rumors about you two, you know.”

“Have you?” Neil asks. “I don't really remember anything about him.”

Whatever hope Andrew was holding on to dies then. If Neil doesn't remember, even now—

But then, in one motion, Neil draws the gun and slashes the ties around Andrew's wrists. Andrew thinks he might get a chance to defend himself, but then Neil swings his entire body over Andrew's. Andrew collapses under the sudden weight, and two gunshots go off in quick succession.

For a moment, Andrew has the terrible thought that Neil has just gotten himself shot. But then he sees the man whose gun was trained on Aaron collapsed on the floor, clutching his leg. 

“You little shit,” Lola says. “Your father isn't going to be happy about this, you hear me? I don't care how valuable you are, if you're killing his men—”

The sirens are back, louder now, and they make even Lola stop in her tracks. Not in Andrew's head, then. Good to know.

“You didn't,” she breathes. “You called the _cops_? You risked your lives coming here, and you called the _cops_? Do you think they're going to let your little friend Neil go without a fight?”

“Better run, Lola,” Neil says. “I don't think they're going to let _you_ go without a fight, either.”

She hesitates for only a moment. “Your father is going to kill you.”

“He's going to kill you too if you get arrested.”

Lola runs. Neil drops onto the floor immediately to push Andrew's shirt back up, apparently to check for damage. 

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm sorry, I wasn't fast enough, I couldn't stop—”

Andrew grabs the front of Neil's shirt and pulls him down further for a kiss. Neil is so tense that Andrew almost falls back, but Neil's hands clutch at his hair desperately.

“I thought it was over,” Neil says when they separate. “I thought they were going to have me forever, but they didn't wipe my memory this time, they couldn't, they didn't have the equipment, I thought I was going back to Russia—”

There are footsteps hammering down the stairs. Andrew sits up, and Neil sits next to him.

“You need to clean the cuts, I don't know how clean those knives were,” Neil says. “Maybe even a tetanus shot. Aaron, are you—”

“Deeply traumatized by what I just saw? Yes. Otherwise fine? Also yes.”

He means seeing Andrew and Neil kiss. How Aaron manages to be boring even when his life was just at risk is beyond Andrew.

The feds finally reach them, wearing all black gear and armed with significantly more significant weapons than the ones Neil and company were using.

“Holy shit,” one of the feds says. “Is that Romero Malcolm?”

“This is Nathaniel Wesninski,” Aaron says. “As promised, he's going to help you bring down the Butcher of Baltimore and the Moriyamas.”

“What?” Neil says.

“That's the deal,” Aaron says. “You're going to tell them everything, and they're going to give you probation.”

Neil looks to Andrew for confirmation of this. When Andrew doesn't say anything, he says, “Who planned this?”

Just like Neil. “We did,” Andrew says. “We had to make a choice. We chose.”

Neil goes quietly. Somehow Andrew gets himself arrested, too, except when they put him in the back of a car, it is miraculously without handcuffs. Someone must have told them that Neil won't say a word without Andrew there. 

Neil is in the car next to Andrew's. The windows are tinted so dark Andrew can't see Neil through them, but he knows he's there. For now, that's enough.

*

They arrive in DC for questioning close to three hours later. They get dumped in an interrogation room. Andrew barely pays attention to the agents telling him he can't go in with Neil, and in the end they get the okay from one Agent Browning. Browning ultimately sits down across from them and starts his questions.

Andrew is only there for moral support and as an eyewitness. Federal, state, or local, a pig's a pig, and Andrew knows how pigs feel about people like them. Andrew doesn't have much to say about Neil's capture and torture, and he has less to say about the mind control he was subjected to. But he doesn't plan on letting Browning trick Neil into implicating himself.

“You remember things from your life before?” Browning asks. His tone has been measured and dry this entire time. It was a good call, Andrew thinks absently, putting Browning in charge: Neil reacts well to measured and dry.

“A little,” Neil says. “Flashes. Details. More and more lately.”

“Are they triggered by anything?”

Neil looks at Andrew, who stares back.

“Sometimes,” Neil says. “Sometimes they're just a jumble. Being back with the Foxes has helped me sort out what they mean.”

They question him deep into the night, let him get a good night's sleep, and then question him throughout the entirety of the next day. They ask him about Russia, about whether he any killed any political figures (no) or celebrities (also no), how much Russian he speaks (proficient), whether he could locate the place where he was trained (probably). They ask him if he'd like witness protection. They ask him if he would be willing to see a federally sanctioned psychologist once a year. They give him an ultimatum: kill again, and have a cell in federal prison forever.

But the plea deal is not a hoax. When they leave the FBI building, it's with Neil Josten in the system to become a real person. 

“We have a whole day in DC,” Neil says. It's an exaggeration: they have a few hours, and then they need to go to bed in time for an early flight back to South Carolina. The other Foxes flew back last night after being assured they'd get Neil back. “I grew up around here, you know.”

Andrew doesn't ask him if he remembers anything good. He knows there probably isn't anything good to remember. 

“Are you tired?” he asks instead. 

Because Neil does look worn around the edges in a way he rarely has before, shoulders slumping forward, eyes dragging. “I'm fine.”

Andrew hails a cab and tells the driver their hotel name. He isn't interested in sight-seeing. All he wants is for Neil to be back to his baseline. Not normal for anyone else, but normal for him. At least.

Because Neil is as obstinate as obstinate gets, he takes a shower when they get back to the hotel. Because two can play at that game, Andrew climbs in after him, not bothering to undress. Neil is too exhausted to do much other than kiss, but he lets Andrew shampoo his hair for him and keeps looking at Andrew in that hooded way that tugs at Andrew's insides. It's strange to think that Neil almost killed him a couple days ago. It's stranger to think that, for the third time in a row, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Neil gets out of the shower early, and Andrew takes only a few minutes to collect himself. He rids himself of the wet clothes, appreciates the bundle of towels Neil leaves in the bathroom for him, and more thoroughly rinses off. 

When Andrew gets out of the shower, Neil is already in bed. He isn't sleeping yet, though; instead, he has the TV tuned to ESPN and is watching an exy game.

Andrew sits down on the bed next to him, a little gingerly.

“We can request a room change if you do not want to share.”

Neil glances across at him. “You don't want to share?”

“That is not what I said.”

“Oh.” Neil looks at Andrew for another long moment, and then he says, “I don't want a room change.”

Good. Andrew settles on the bed and curves toward Neil, waiting for Neil to turn his attention back toward Andrew. 

When he does, Andrew cups a hand around Neil's chin. “Yes or no?”

“I was watching exy,” Neil says. He has that stupid “I think I'm clever” smile he used to get before. “But if you insist—”

“Junkie,” Andrew says, kissing Neil's lip and biting down just enough to get Neil to react. 

Neither of them has enough energy for this, really, and so in the end they end up just lying on the bed, Neil's head cradled in Andrew's hand. They kiss a little, but mostly Neil listens to the exy coverage while Andrew waits for the inevitable story about the shootout and Neil's arrest.

It doesn't come. Instead, Neil just lies there, being all Neil-like, like nothing out of the ordinary has happened recently. Andrew can't quite believe this is over: Neil is safe or at least safe-adjacent, and he is still here, with Andrew, resolutely not running. 

When he notices Andrew staring, Neil presses a kiss to the inside of Andrew's scarred wrist. Andrew doesn't quite know how to process it, so instead he closes his eyes.

There will be time to think about this later, on their flight back to PSU, on the many bus rides to many away games that will follow, in their dorm room, on the exy court, in Andrew's dinky car. For now, Andrew stays in the moment. Eventually, he sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to say I wrote this while working a billion hours a week, writing playing on, and moving to a different state. Like idk how I did all this but anyway I'm burnt out now I'm writing Arthur/Buster fic
> 
> Also: holy shit is that art amazing or what? Like I want to die from how good [aminiyard](http://aminiyard.tumblr.com/) is. [Here is a huge version so you can see all the detail & cry with me.](https://i.imgur.com/452IxsT.png)
> 
> Also: I literally cannot believe big bang happened this year bc I feel like every single person is crazy busy so shout out to the aftgbb mods for making this happen wow
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment if you enjoyed or spotted a typo.


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